Mrs. Patton was tending her vegetable garden the day the windsurfer broke his neck. SheŽd planted a row of parsley to add to the tomatoes and rosemary and was tidying up the plot when she heard screams on the beach. She turned to see three men and four women running along the waterŽs edge and followed the angle of their heads to a red and blue sail flapping in the wind fifty meters from shore.
She carried her trowel to the fence and watched them bring the windsurfer in, and heard the siren of an ambulance in the distance making for ShelleyŽs Cove.
The men and women laid the windsurfer down on the soft sand back from the waters edge and a short while later appeared to be arguing among themselves. Mrs.Patton figured it was about moving the body. He must be still alive, she thought. If he was dead, thereŽd be no argument.
Five minutes later two ambulance men raced across the sand to the huddle, and ten minutes after that, the windsurfer was carried carefully away.
The group dispersed and the waves kept rolling in. Five minutes later the beach was deserted.
She stood alone, with only the sun for company behind the fence, with the damp earth caking dry on her hands. She went back to her garden, dug the trowel in, took a great breath of air, then walked inside the house that sheŽd bought one year and three days before.
She washed her hands in the laundry with detergent, cleaning the dirt from her old, twisted fingers.
| "The men and women laid the windsurfer down on the soft sand back from the waters edge and a short
while later appeared to be arguing among themselves. Mrs.Patton figured it was about moving the body. He must be still alive, she thought. " |
Not one was straight, more claws than hands. Still, they were clean now.
She imagined the ambulance arriving at the hospital thirty miles away as she put the kettle on, wondering who the windsurfer was. A local? She didnŽt think so. She hadnŽt seen the red and blue sail before.
There was not much that happened on the beach that passed her attention. If she wasnŽt in the garden working, she was on the back porch, or in the kitchen cooking, looking out. Only when the sun went down did the goings on elude her.
Was it red and blue? She shot a glance through the window. A man throwing a stick, chased by a dog, was walking along the beach. He hadnŽt been there before. There was no windsurf board to be seen. She began to doubt the color. If it had been blue and green it could have been the architectŽs son. SheŽd spoken to him before. Nice boy. But his sail was blue and green. Why did she think thereŽd been red in it? A red flag waving at a bull on a lonely beach? Or at a seventy-five year old pensioner on medication?
She pulled a sachet of green tea out of a tin and jiggled it in the boiling water, then added a teaspoon of honey. Green tea? Yes, she was convinced now that thered been green in the sail. A band of green lifting up in the wind.
She was annoyed with herself for being confused about the color. She should have photographed the scene, like sheŽd done with so many other things. Then there would be no doubt about it. The green or the red or the yellow would be there to see. And now she was thinking about yellow. Maybe one of the rescuers had been wearing yellow?
It began to rain outside and there was no one left to be seen on the beach. Only the rain, getting heavier, and the sea
turning grey. She walked out of the kitchen and into the small pantry beside it. A dozen prints were pinned on the far wall. She walked over and studied
them. There were faces there that she thought sheŽd seen before. A young man wearing a yellow shirt. And an older man behind him, stern-faced on a pier somewhere.
There was a mountain and small ant-like figures climbing it. She wished she knew what these prints meant. And where they had been taken.
She took two photos a day, so it took her six days to change the twelve on display, which meant that the oldest ones on the bottom of the board could be no more than six days old. She knew that was right because she limited herself to two a day. Taken and changed. She never failed to maintain that rhythm, which meant sheŽd seen the men on the pier six days ago, when sheŽd been at the foot of a mountain looking up. How was that possible? A pier and a mountain?
She looked at her fingers, the two rubber bands were still there which meant she hadnŽt taken the two new photographs yet. And it was getting late. How stupid of her not to have carried the camera into the garden. She felt a stab of anger. At that, at everything. Still, what was the point of being angry, it wouldnŽt change anything. Only make it worse. Angry, as well as confused.
She went into the study looking for the camera. It wasnŽt where she normally left it on the desk. The anger came back. Why would she leave it elsewhere? She told herself everyday to return the camera to the desk. But yesterday she hadnŽt done that. And looking for the camera now in its hiding place would be a long drawn out affair. She knew it.
She went back into the living room and then the kitchen, trying to remember what sheŽd done yesterday, thinking as she went, that yesterday was like a wall that lay behind her, and getting back over it, then climbing back again was getting harder all the time.
She walked back into the pantry and looked at the last two prints on the corkboard. An antique car looked back at her and next to it a man changing a tire. She studied the foreground in the print and saw the rosebushes in her front garden. They were red when they bloomed. Maybe sheŽd been thinking of them when she saw the windsurfer because sheŽd been in the front garden yesterday. There was no doubting that, because the prints were there on the wall. The last prints. YesterdayŽs prints.
The thought of life being different flickered through her mind. How had it been before, when there was no wall between the past and the present? It gave her a headache trying to think how it must have been. When was it like that? Or was she just imagining that it had ever been different? It must have been though because she hadnŽt been wearing two rubber bands on her fingers her whole life and sheŽd only had a dark room since sheŽd been at ShelleyŽs Cove. And she knew that sheŽd been here one year and three days.
Next to the great calendar on the kitchen wall, the date of her arrival was written. What sheŽd done before that was gone. There were memories of people chattering and big buildings and cars everywhere. It distressed her to think back to that. And being distressed she would cry for hours in the kitchen, looking out on the only world she knew, ShelleyŽs Cove. That was where she was now. There was nowhere else.
Still, right now, the past was the least of her worries. She needed to find the camera and take the two rubber bands off her fingers.
| "The creek cut back, away from the beach but she turned left and roared up a steep slope until the
Ocean came back into view and down to the soft sand that slowed the trike as it crossed to the waterŽs edge. It was then that she saw
the windsurfer fifty meters from the shore." |
They were tight and her fingers were red. She wanted to take them off now, but knew she couldnŽt until the photos were taken.
In a wicker basket in the living room she kept all the photos that sheŽd taken the last year, but sheŽd only looked in the basket once, upending it, and staring at the prints scattered on the floor as if they belonged to someone else. It had been too traumatic to look at a yearŽs work, because she couldnŽt remember any of the faces there. She always tried to photograph faces, because everything else stayed the same. She knew where the rosebushes were, and the beach. But she didnŽt know who the people were. There were too many of them, thrown across the floor. She never looked in the basket again. Only at the dozen prints on the board. She had some chance of knowing who they were.
It occurred to her then that perhaps the two men on the pier would also be in the wicker basket. SheŽd never thought of checking if the same faces were repeated. But something told her they might be. She wandered back into the living room, and doing that, she saw the camera on top of the basket. She grabbed it and hurried outside.
The rain had stopped but it was still gray and the wind was cool. She moved with sharp urgent steps across the damp grass to the motor-tricycle. The key was still in the ignition. She never took it out. She straddled the broad leather seat and started the motor. It purred like a jungle cat on the back lawn, then she was off, with the camera strapped around her neck and the wind blowing through her white hair. She roared through the open gate and down the hill. She knew the route well. Before long she was beneath the shoulder of a hill that hid the beach from view following a track beside a creek.
She felt relaxed when she was on the trike, focused on the chore of driving, when only the here and now mattered, negotiating the way, as she went up and down and around. She rode well for a pensioner with AlzheimerŽs Disease.
The creek cut back, away from the beach but she turned left and roared up a steep slope until the Pacific Ocean came back into view and down to the soft sand that slowed the trike as it crossed to the waterŽs edge. It was then that she saw the windsurfer fifty meters from the shore. She stopped driving and stared out. The sail was red and blue. She took her camera out, focused and took the shot, feeling as she did, a stab of panic in her stomach.
The wind was blowing fiercely now as she studied the pirouettes of the lone windsurfer in the sea. It was him she knew it! And then she saw the three men and four women along the beach playing volleyball. It was them!
A film of cold sweat covered her forehead. She saw the wall to the past now, as if it were a wall on one side of her garden, covered with ivy. Nothing could be seen beyond it, except glimpses when a gate opened, and people like the two men on the pier came through. But now she saw the wall to the future broken down. The symmetry of her garden had been
upended. The past blackened out, the future as clear as a bell. She screamed out to the windsurfer as a strong gust lifted him high in the air, ripping the sail in two and slamming him hard, head first into the sea.
She heard another scream along the beach as the three men and four women began running along the waterŽs edge. They ran past her as if she wasnŽt there and she photographed them. Then she drove back the way she had come and heard the siren of an ambulance as she went through the open gate to her garden.
This was a new problem to contend with, she said to herself, knowing, as she entered the house, that the ambulance men were carrying the windsurfer away. She took the two rubber bands off her fingers and took a great sigh as she looked back through the kitchen window and watched a dog chasing a ball along the beach.
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