We stayed with Mrs Kertész, a big Hungarian widow with a voice like fog-horn. When she answered the door, she cried ‘Duncan!’ and threw her arms around me. For a moment, everything went dark as she squeezed me, and my head disappeared into her enormous bosom. She smelt of cabbage and beef, and I wheezed. She cried ‘Duncan!’ again. ‘Let me look at you!’
She stood back, her arms spread, breathing heavily. ‘You look so well!’ she boomed, and when she looked at Estelle, she said, ‘And you’ve brought me a girl!’
‘Hi,’ said Estelle, holding her hand out.
‘Come in,’ said Mrs Kertész, shaking it. ‘You’re welcome to my home.’
We sat in the kitchen and drank black tea. Mrs Kertész didn’t keep milk in the house. ‘Any animal that needs more than one stomach must have something wrong with it,’ is one of her favourites. Another is ‘More beetroot?’ Her face is the colour of beetroot, and she wears her hair piled up on top of her head, kept in place with a dozen clips. She gave us a room at the top of the house, with a window that opened on to a spreading view of the sea, and understood when I said that there was a wave coming, and that I had to buy a board. She made me promise to give her all my news later, and when I said, ‘I’ll try,’ she slapped the top of my head and told me that I’d do more than that. She turned to Estelle, said, ‘This is a boy that needs watching,’ and let rip with a barrage of laughs that snapped, wheezed and popped like balloons all around us.
‘You’re telling me,’ said Estelle.
‘You never know what his sort are up to, do you?’
‘Don’t worry. I keep my eye on him.’
‘And I think you keep more than that on him, no?’
‘Maybe,’ said Estelle.
‘Just maybe?’
‘Maybe more than that...’
‘Good,’ said Mrs Kertész, and she took Estelle’s hand, patted it, turned it over and stroked the palm, as if she was preparing to read it. ‘I can see we are going to be very good friends.’ She looked at me and nodded. ‘There is nothing like being very good friends, no?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Friends and lovers; they make the world go round. Where would we be without them?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I do,’ she said, ‘we’d be in the cow.’
‘In the cow?’
‘Oh yes. Deep in it, I think, and there’d be no way out.’
Estelle looked at me, and for a moment I thought her face was going to explode. Her cheeks were puffing and her eyes bulged. Little lines appeared at the corners of her mouth, and she snorted another ballooning laugh.
‘Oh yes,’ said Mrs Kertész, ‘and that’s another thing, laughter. Did you know, when you laugh, you make drugs in your brain?’
‘Do you?’
‘You do, absolutely. That’s why you feel good when you do it,’ and she laughed too. ‘I want everybody laughing in my house, and then I’m feeling happy.’
I laughed.
‘See?’ said Mrs Kertész. ‘Whatever your unhappiness, you are feeling better already.’
‘I feel better just for seeing you,’ I said.
She ruffled my hair. ‘Nice boy,’ she said, and when she’d finished, I tidied my hair. ‘And now you must catch your wave.’
‘Yeah?’
‘And it’s called?’ she said.
‘The Master of the Cure.’
‘Really!’ said Mrs Kertész, and she turned to Estelle. ‘Doesn’t he think up the strangest names?’
‘You’re telling me.’
‘It’s an antidote to the Communist Master of Disease.’
‘Argh…’ she went, and her face lost its joy. Mrs Kertész had escaped from Communists in 1950.
‘Sorry,’ I said.
‘Why can’t you call your waves nice things?’
‘I don’t know...’
‘You could have called it “Estelle”,’ she said.
‘Maybe,’ I said.
‘Maybe?’ said Mrs Kertész. She laughed now, and said to Estelle, ‘What do you think of maybe?’
‘Not much,’ she said.
‘Is he a silly boy or not?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Estelle, and she took my arm.
‘Love never does, does it?’ said Mrs Kertész.
‘No.’
It was time I bought a long board, a Malibu, and time I changed my style. Enough rip and slash, enough speed on the waves, enough cutting up in the swell. I went to Laughin’ Bob’s Shack, on the front. Bob’s a bald man, I’ve never seen him wearing anything but board-shorts, a T-shirt and Tiki Walkabout Slaps. He was born in Birmingham, but moved to Cornwall when he was six. He used to surf, but stopped when he wiped out at Thurso and smashed his knees on the reef. Now one leg is shorter than the other, the scars are florid, his balance is gone, and his nerve with it. Now he satisfies himself by shaping boards, fixing dings, watching breaks from beaches, and drinking beer. When I called on him, he was in his workshop, working in a cloud of fibreglass, the noise of his sanders and cutters filling the air. I yelled ‘Bob!’ and he didn’t look up. ‘Bob! BOB!’
I didn’t want to surprise him, I didn’t want to make him jump and lose grip of his sander, so I stood to one side and waited. There were posters on the walls: Tom Curren at Hossegor, a couple of guys paddling out from Bell Beach, Victoria. A topless woman in a Fistral slot. A wall of water breaking along Hawaii’s north shore, a circle of Sex Wax stickers. A flying boat landing in a tropical lagoon, a solitary surfer standing with his back to a setting sun. Dying surf cruising towards a sandy shore. Bob looked up and saw me; he stopped working, flicked a switch off and yelled, ‘Duncan!’
‘Bob!’
‘Long time no see!’ He roared with laughter, wiped his hands on a damp cloth and we shook. ‘What’re you doing?’
‘The usual,’ I said. ‘Waiting for the big one.’
He laughed again, looked at Estelle, looked back at me, smiled and mouthed, ‘Yeah?’
‘Fuck off,’ I mouthed.
‘Sure,’ he said.
‘But I need a board.’
‘Wonders will never cease? What happened?’
‘I got wiped out at Sennen. I lost my Tuna.’
‘How many times have I told you?’ he said. ‘Use a leash.’
‘Very funny,’ I said.
He slapped my back and we went through to the shop.
The boards stood in soldiered rows, all fresh, all potential, all shiny and new. I told him that I was moving on, that I was ready for a new day. ‘I want a Malibu.’
‘Mod or trad?’
‘Trad.’
‘OK,’ he said, and he clicked his fingers. ‘This is the one you want,’ and he picked out a big blue one. ‘Nine Six. It’s a pistol.’ He stroked its deck, tapped its nose and rubbed its decal with the palm of his hand. ‘You’ll love it.’
I held it.
‘What d’you think?’
‘It’s beautiful,’ I said. ‘I think I could live with it.’
‘And a beautiful price too.’
‘I bet.’
‘To you…’
‘To me?’
‘Yeah. Seeing as you’re the worst customer I ever had…’
‘How much?’
He told me.
Fuck.
‘Size-to-weight ratio’s as good as it gets,’ he said. ‘You won’t find better.’
‘I’m sure,’ I said.
‘Why do I believe you?’
‘Because I know as much about it as you do?’
Bob looked at Estelle. ‘Does he?’ he said.
‘Don’t ask me,’ she said.
‘Oh yeah,’ I said, ‘Bob, this is Estelle. Estelle, Bob.’
‘How you doing?’
‘OK.’
‘She wants a T-shirt,’ I said.
‘Do I?’ she said.
‘Yeah,’ said Bob, and leaving me holding the board, he took her to a rack at the front of the shop. ‘There you go,’ he said. ‘Boardwalk, Billabong, Stussy, Life’s a Beach, Sex Wax. If they make it, we’ve got it.’
‘And if they haven’t,’ I said, ‘it’s not worth buying. That right, Bob?’
‘Bet your arse, Dunc.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘I never bet that.’
‘That’s not what I heard,’ said Bob.
‘What you heard’s an echo,’ I said.
‘Do you ever think Dunc doesn’t know what he’s on about?’ Bob said to Estelle.
‘Never,’ she said.
‘Ha!’ I said.
‘Yeah,’ said Bob, ‘and ha! to you, little boy.’
‘Sure.’
‘I think you’re too good for him,’ he said to her.
‘Dream on,’ I said.
Estelle wore her Sex Wax T-shirt, and I carried my Nine Six Malibu to the beach. The sun was high, clouds flew and the Master of the Cure was close. We kissed at the high-tide line, she ran her fingernails down my spine and then I waded into the water. It was blue and cold, and though there were other surfers there, I felt alone. I stared ahead, I did not flinch. I put my ear to the sea and heard my wave coming; it was whispering at me, instructing me. I splashed my face and chest, pushed the board ahead, lay down and began to paddle out.
The swell was big and powerful, and it roared from its lips to its feet, thrusting up and pushing down, round and round and round. At that moment I was two minutes from a place I was born to see, I was the tip of a waiting bullet, and the edge of a steady knife. The pains in my back and my arse were gone, and all the worries in my head were drifting above me like pigeons. In a lull between sets, I stopped paddling and listened to the current as it dragged shingle and rocks along the seabed. It rustled and twitched, and all the tiny creatures that lived in it moved slowly. There was peace in motion, motion in the silence and all the silence spoke. A wave broke in front of me; I rolled under it, paddled through and up again, into another lull, then another, and then another, the last.
The Master of the Cure was building in front of me, it was a living wave, as fleshy as I could wish. I turned to the right and felt the power that thrust ahead of it. This came as an electric pulse through the water; I counted to ten, the swell filled and pushed, the seconds lengthened, I caught each one in the palm of my hand, turned them over, inspected them, rubbed them against my cheek and then I stood up.
You know that feeling when you’re asleep and dreaming but you’re about to wake up. The dream exists in some half-place, its pictures and the feeling it gives you fills your body, and though you know it’s not happening to your conscious self, you think it could be. You’re about to be killed, you’re falling miles, you can see the ground coming up to meet you and feel the wind rushing through your hair. You’re facing a pack of wild dogs. You’ve been told that you have to walk a thousand miles through fire, you’re in a room full of naked women, and every one of them has your name tattooed on her forehead. You’re walking through the carriages of a speeding train, and though the other passengers are staring at you, you think you’re alright. Then you look down and you realise that you forgot to get dressed that morning. You look up and see your clothes in the luggage rack, and though they’re within easy reach, you can’t get them. You open your eyes a little and know it’s a dream, but is it? When you close them, the dream images are projected on to the backs of your eyes, you can smell the worry and taste the horror. You try to force yourself awake but nothing works, you’re glued to your bed and your feet refuse to work. Your brain does not obey your wishes, it holds on and will not let go. Time becomes a single, long second; as I was picked up by the Master of the Cure, this is exactly what I felt. I was suspended between my hopes and reality, I hung like a kite between the sea and the sky. My new board was light and fresh, my feet held it like a clamp and the sound of the wave seemed to come from miles away. I cried out, and my cry broke from my mouth with pain though I felt no pain, only joy. The wave was breaking in a perfect line, I slowed to let it catch up with me and then it started to barrel behind me. I looked over my shoulder and watched it approach, as clean as a new sheet and absolutely round. I crouched, straightened and it came to me.
I saw Estelle in it, her hair, her thighs and her breasts, her nipples lowering towards me, and I saw my mother’s fading face reflected there, in a tube so long and dry and perfect that it appeared to stretch back miles. As I surfed it, not a single drop of water touched my back, though I was surrounded by the stuff. The shore had disappeared, the sky did not exist, and the reef was under my complete control. All I could see was foam above me and a curl of spray ahead. I shifted my weight to the tail of the board, I slowed and dipped, reached out and touched the walls of the tube. I could write on the sea, and the sea held the letters. I shouted and my words echoed, and they grabbed the sound of my wake and kissed it. I kissed myself and I kissed the wave, the wave held me and would not let go. It told me that it had waited for me, that it belonged to me, and that I could do what I wanted with it. I could put it in a bag and take it on holiday with me, I could teach it Cantonese or how to tango. I leaned forward and looked out; there was a gull in the sky, and it screeched as it glided over me. This was a jealous screech, caught and then swallowed by the waves. I strained my head to watch, I hopped to the middle of the board, the tube began to weaken and shoot; I dropped out of it, went for a bottom turn, reversed and headed back the way I had come. I flipped off the white water that was breaking behind me and, as the wave began to fail, I turned under a section, crept back and re-entered, slowly this time, ahead of the breaking lip, exposed to the shore and the sky, and anyone who had waited for me to come saw me now, as if I had just been born.
Estelle waved, and when she waved, I waved back. The sun reflected off the palm of her hand, and her hair blew in the breeze. I yelled her name but the word was snatched by the sea, pushed under and drowned. I saw her mouth open but I didn’t hear what she shouted. Another surfer dropped in behind me; a kid in a black suit riding a yellow board. He ripped and slashed behind me, I pushed ahead and let my weight kill the ride. I sank into the lump the Master of the Cure had become, and when I surfaced I watched its back cruising to the shore. I was alone at sea, and all the gifts I had ever wished for were filling my head. I flipped my board around and paddled out again, over the rising sets and on to another wave.