‘Elinor, don’t you think the weather’s too wild for you to go surfing today?’ asked Jennifer bluntly, as she stood in the shallows with her wet blonde hair streaming down her back and her surfboard tucked under one arm.
‘No. I’ll be fine,’ said Elinor firmly, holding her surfboard defensively in front of her as she prepared to enter the ocean.
Elinor stared aggressively into Jennifer’s clear blue eyes but Jennifer was a tough cookie and wasn’t afraid of a challenge. She reached out a hand and held on to Elinor’s surfboard, much to Elinor’s annoyance.
‘I really don’t advise you to go out to the surf zone. I’m telling you the waves are too strong for you.’
‘Look, Jennifer, I appreciate the friendly advice but I’ll be fine.’
‘Elinor! I’m telling you as an experienced surfer that you won’t manage the waves today. The others would agree with me on this one. Tony would’ve warned you too if he’d seen you.’
This was the final straw for Elinor.
‘He would, would he? Well, Tony’s not here now and nobody else is paying the slightest bit of attention, so why don’t you just let me get on with it? With due respect, you’re not my mother, you know.’
To Elinor’s satisfaction Jennifer flinched at this.
Elinor had no idea what had come over her but she felt the pent-up emotion of the last few weeks bursting out of her. Her two sleepless nights were playing havoc with her reason. What on earth was she doing picking a fight with Jennifer, of all people?
Jennifer reluctantly removed her hand from Elinor’s surfboard.
‘Fine. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you,’ she said quietly, making Elinor feel incredibly guilty and foolish in the process.
Jennifer then walked majestically out of the water and onto the sandy beach, heading towards the car park. Elinor watched her leave, feeling wretched. She’d have to apologise profusely to her later.
She turned back to the ocean, putting her regrets to the back of her mind. She felt the adrenaline and excitement build up in her as she felt the fresh sea spray hit her face. The roar of the waves seemed to her to be beating on a war drum inside her head, challenging her to get back out into the ocean and fight.
The red lifeguard flags were positioned to the left hand side of the beach so Elinor moved towards the right. She stood for a while, watching the sea, trying to gauge the waves and the wind.
She immediately spotted the rip current, which today was a wide channel of dark, choppy water beating a path straight out to the surf zone. Mick had taught them well.
The waves were the largest she’d seen yet and they were thundering at an incredibly fast pace towards the sandy beach. How on earth was she going to be able to paddle fast enough to keep up with them?
Jennifer had a point warning her, but then again the lifeguards were on duty today so how bad could it really be?
Elinor started to wade into the water and then carefully, so she didn’t get in the way of any of the surfers twisting and turning ably on the incoming waves, she began to duck dive under the waves as she made her way out to the surf zone.
Conditions that day were very different to what she was used to. For a start, her arms had to work a lot harder to pull her through the tormented sea and when she duck dived she struggled to make any leeway against the surprisingly strong pull of the waves drawing her backwards, each one of them striving viciously to carry her shoreward.
By the time she made it to the surf zone her muscles were screaming silently with the pain of pitting their strength against the forces of nature. She felt she’d reached the end of her endurance and had no idea how she was now going to find the strength to surf back to shore again.
She rocked backwards and forwards violently as she sat on her surfboard. Keeping an eye on the fast-moving waves, she wondered for the first time if she should have heeded Jennifer’s warning.
All she could hear in her brain at that moment was her mother’s voice, chanting like a mantra, that pride comes before a fall. She knew a well-grounded or mature person would have at this point conceded defeat and made their way by the safest means possible back to the beach, saving their strength for another more lenient day. But she’d never been one to give in to the promptings of her better self.
Her obstinacy came to the forefront. If she gave up now, her argument with Jennifer would have all been for nothing. And she was yearning to surf again. Never mind that the craving had hit her today, on a hideously windy day with the waves crashing in from what Elinor estimated was often a six-foot height and moving at a good twenty miles an hour.
She knew she wouldn’t have the strength to continuously attempt to ride the rollers streaming in towards land, so she would have to give it her best effort and then leave the rest for another day.
She caught sight of two wave peaks moving rapidly towards her and angled herself so she was in the right position to paddle furiously to try and catch them. She lay down and dipped her hands down into the water, starting to paddle aggressively as fast as she could.
Within a couple of minutes she felt herself sliding down into a trough before rising upwards again as the wave behind her pulled her upwards. As soon as she felt herself rise on the wave she continued to paddle furiously a few more times and then quickly pushed her body upwards, sliding her back foot first and then her front foot forward in between her hands, before standing up with her knees bent.
As soon as she stood up she knew she’d been too late.
She started to tilt back into the trough between the waves and lost her balance. She was hit with the full force of the second wave that was stretching up ominously behind her. As she slipped from her surfboard she felt her left hand ram itself at an awkward angle against the hard surface of the board, pain instantly firing up the length of her arm as she was tossed unceremoniously into the water.
What felt like the weight of an elephant or a mid-sized truck slammed on top of her, pushing her deeper than she’d ever been previously. Her ears began to hurt excruciatingly as the water pressure weighed in on her discomfort. Her left arm felt like it was on fire and the leash was tugging hard on her ankle as though someone had grabbed it and was pulling fiercely and repeatedly on it. She was shaken like a rag doll, a headache starting to spread across her forehead as the cold started to bite.
Forty seconds later, she felt the crushing roller that was holding her down lighten somewhat, and she knew she had to get to the surface for another breath before the next wave smothered her again. She kicked wildly with her legs, fighting against the turbulence in the water and trying to slice through the currents swirling around her. She managed with a great deal of effort to move slowly upwards, feeling more and more desperate as her lungs started to burn with the need for more oxygen.
When she managed to break through the surface of the water she gulped madly at the air, not caring if another wave was about to slam down on her head. And she did manage to take a few breaths before another wave rained down. Unfortunately for her the wave had broken. She felt herself shoved under the water again, shaking like a feeble piece of flotsam as she was spun around and around.
She no longer felt she had the muscle strength to fight her way through this second ducking. Inside her head, as she hung limply under the water, she felt strangely calm and philosophical. She knew she was fully at the mercy of the ocean and there was nothing she could do about it. Maybe this was now the end of the road for her...
All of a sudden she sensed a hand tucking itself under her arm, pulling and jerking her upwards to the surface, the iron grip squeezing painfully on her flesh. As she burst through the surface of the water again, she felt herself being dragged roughly onto a floating board and pulled shoreward.
Her chest was heaving with the deep breaths she was greedily gulping down. She opened her eyes after a moment and looked at the yellow board she was clinging onto tightly with her right hand.
The lifeguard.
He was now competently cutting across the choppy water, pulling her along with him. She felt her leash dragging on her foot. Hopefully her surfboard would be trailing along behind them.
The lower part of her left arm was still in excruciating pain and she knew that she’d done some serious damage to it. Miserably, she waited until they reached shallower waters and then slid off the board, her feet finding the soft sand. The lifeguard put his hand under her arm and walked with her out of the water.
As soon as she reached the edge of the dry sand she fell onto her knees. Her head was spinning wildly and she started to retch. Thankfully, she had next to nothing in her stomach.
After a while, once the nausea had passed, she sat down on her calf muscles and looked up. The lifeguard was crouched down next to her, watching her with concern.
Elinor smiled at him weakly and then looked around the beach self-consciously, wondering who else had witnessed her getting rescued by a lifeguard.
She could only imagine the scorn of the other more competent surfers as they watched her get tossed by the ocean that was too strong for her and then, in the ultimate indignity, saw her rescued by a lifeguard. And all because she was cocky enough to think she could manage these conditions.
In the distance, a man in a black wetsuit with an unruly mop of short blonde hair was making his way quickly across to them. As he came into closer focus, she groaned.
It was Tony.
She really didn’t feel up to getting a scolding today. She put her head down again, pretending not to have seen him.
‘What’s going on?’ Tony asked anxiously as he came up to them.
‘Hi Tony, you’re just the man we need,’ declared the lifeguard thankfully. ‘This lady was wiped out by a wave and then she seemed to be struggling to keep her head above the water, so I went out to help her. But as soon as we reached the beach she seemed to get dizzy and she’s been retching for a while. I don’t know if it’s concussion or not.’
‘OK. Thanks, Dave. Leave her to me, I’ll take care of it.’
Relieved, the lifeguard got up and went back to his post.
Tony proceeded to ask Elinor a number of questions that she recognised straight away as being related to concussion. He asked her if she could follow his finger as he moved it from left to right. As he started to test her eyes with various exercises she started to feel increasingly upset.
‘Look, Tony,’ said Elinor impatiently, grabbing hold of his hand to stop it moving. ‘It’s not my head I’m worried about. It’s my left arm! It’s killing me just now with the pain of it.’
Tony looked down at her left arm and saw that it was hanging limply by her lap. He tried to pick it up but as soon as he touched it she yelled out.
‘Ow! Bloody hell! No, don’t touch it. It’s sore!’
There was a long pause as they stared at each other.
‘Elinor, I think the best thing for you to do right now is to go to Newquay Hospital and get your injuries looked at. You might need an X-ray done. Do you want me to call Leo for you?’
Hearing Leo’s name, Elinor felt the tears start to her eyes. Irrational thoughts started circling in her head. What on earth was she going to do with Leo’s car, which was sitting in the car park?
‘Leo’s not here,’ she said in a small voice. ‘He’s in London and he’s not coming back until Sunday.’
‘No problem. I’ll take you up there myself, then. Can you stand up?’
Elinor nodded brusquely and stood up quickly, carefully putting all her weight on her right arm, before Tony even had the chance to bend down and help her up.
Tony then crouched down to undo the leash on her ankle and picked up her surfboard.
‘Where’s your surfboard?’ asked Elinor in surprise.
‘I didn’t bring it. I wasn’t planning on going surfing,’ answered Tony shortly. ‘I only came out here today because I received a call from Jennifer. She told me you’d insisted on going out in very rough surfing conditions and she was worried about you.’
Elinor didn’t have anything to say to this. She walked slowly across the beach towards the car park, wallowing in self-pity and self-recriminations. That day, the whole length of Constantine Beach felt like the walk of shame to her.