Yep. Needs a lot of west in the swell.
Fuck, said Loonie. Look at this thing. How big is that?
Twenty feet, I spose.
No way!
And it's breakin square.
The reef's half outta the water, I said. It's nuts.
Yeah, said Sando with a laugh. Horrible, innit?
Aw, man, said Loonie.
The next frontier, said Sando.
I knew he'd surfed some big waves in his time. He spoke of Mexico often enough, of Indonesia and various Pacific atolls, and back here he'd taken on Old Smoky alone, paddled out time and again without a soul to watch or help. He was a pioneer; I couldn't doubt his experience or his courage. But this was something else. And I didn't know whether to feel honoured or angry that he might expect us to attempt it with him.
You think it's really possible? I asked, trying not to sound feeble. I mean, what do you really think? Honestly.
Honestly? he said. Mate, I need a shit just looking at it.
I laughed with him but Loonie turned on us.
You mean you're scared of it?
Sando looked a little taken aback. He shrugged. Well, a man'd be stupid not to be scared. I mean, look at this thing.
I'm scared talkin about it, I muttered.
But Loonie only scowled in disapproval.
Fear's natural, mate, said Sando. There's no shame in it.
Loonie rolled his eyes, but he stopped short of contradicting him.
Being afraid, said Sando. Proves you're alive and awake.
Whatever you reckon, said Loonie, not relishing the prospect of another of Sando's little seminars.
Animals react out of instinct, Sando continued. Like they're always on automatic. We've got plenty of that, too. But our minds complicate things, slow us down. We're always calculating the odds, measuring the consequences. But you can train your mind to live with fear and deal with the anticipation.
Aw, boys, said Eva coming into the room, where the fire smoked away untended. Now you got him going.
Every day, said Sando, making an elaborate show of ignoring her. Every day, people face down their own fears. They make calculations, bargains with God, strategic manoeuvres. That's how we first crossed oceans and learnt to fly and split the atom, how we found the nerve to give up on all the old superstitions. Sando gestured grandly at the books against the wall. That's mankind for you, he said. Our higher side. We rise to a challenge and set a course. We take a decision. You put your mind to something. Just deciding to do it gets you halfway there. Daring to try.
I cleared my throat uncertainly and he looked at me with unexpected fondness.
But that doesn't mean you don't feel fear, he continued. You can't lie about that. Denying fear, well, that's. . unmanly. And if you're a woman? asked Eva.
We all looked at her blankly.
I'm sure you mean unworthy, she said.
Sando blinked. Yeah, he murmured. Dishonourable. Dishonest. Whatever.
Husband and wife exchanged glances I couldn't interpret. I sat there trying to take all this in, only faintly consoled by the knowledge that Sando could look at that Polaroid and be afraid like me.
Of course, he said mischievously, we don't have to try it on. We could always go back to riding the Point when it's two foot and sunny. What d'you reckon?
He looked at us with a kind of comradely warmth that made me want to not disappoint him.
No harm lookin, I said. I guess.
Piece a piss, said Loonie.
We laughed and poked the fire and threw cushions, but underneath all the smiles and cheers I had a sick feeling. This winter I'd seen and done stuff I never could have imagined previously. Things had borne down so quickly on me that it was brain-shaking. For the past few months I'd been an outrider, a trailblazer, and the excitement and strangeness of it had changed me. There was such an intoxicating power to be had from doing things that no one else dared try. But once we started talking about the Nautilus I got the creeping sense that I'd begun something I didn't know how to finish.
Storms continued to come late that winter and into spring, but none big or westerly enough to make it worth our while giving the Nautilus a try. On the mildest October swell Sando took us out to reconnoitre the place, and it was everything he said it was. Even though it only humped up and broke intermittently while we were alongside it made me anxious to watch and I can't say I was heartbroken to be denied the chance to test myself there that year. But without swell I was overtaken by restlessness and by a boredom from which there seemed to be no relief. At school I was in freefall and at home my new lassitude set the oldies on edge. The old girl tried to broach the subject with me but I cut her dead every time. Everything around me seemed so pointless and puny. The locals in the street looked cowed and weak and ordinary. Wherever I went I felt like the last person awake in a room of sleepers. Little wonder my parents seemed so relieved when it came time for school camp.
Angelus High sent its students to stay at the old quarantine station in the bush at the harbour entrance. You could make it out a mile across the water from town but it seemed more remote than it was. I went without enthusiasm. I had a cold and I suppose in retrospect I was mildly depressed, so it was a surprise to be as struck as I was by the peculiar atmosphere of the place. The settlement itself was little more than a cluster of Victorian barracks and cottages on a patch of level ground beyond the highwater mark. The decommissioned buildings seemed hunkered down, besieged by sky and sea and landscape. The steep isthmus behind them was choked with thickets of coastal heath from which granite tors stood up at mad angles. Every human element, from the slumping rooftops to the sad little graveyard, seemed older and more forlorn than the ancient country beyond. The scrub might have been low and wizened and the stones badly weathered, but after every shower of rain they all shone; they stood up new and fresh, as though they'd only moments ago heaved themselves from the skin of the earth.
That week I slipped away at every opportunity from whichever character-building group activity we'd been wrangled into, and made my way to the cemetery or the little beach below it. From there I could gaze across to the distant wharf at Angelus whose cranes and silos looked too small to be real. It was like seeing the familiar world at a twofold remove, from another time as much as another direction, for it felt that I was in an outpost of a different era. It wasn't only the colonial buildings that gave me such a sense, but also the land they were built on. Each headstone and every gnarled grasstree spoke of a past forever present, ever-pressing, and for the first time in my life I began to feel, plain as gravity, not only was life short, but there had been so much of it.
Queenie found me feverish one afternoon in the old mortuary room. It was a derelict place full of webs and bird nests and flickering shadows and the eeriness of it distracted us from our awkwardness. We stood looking at the raised slab with its gruesome gutters and drains.
Creepy, she murmured.
Yeah, I said honking into my handkerchief. And sad.
All the waiting around they did. The people stuck here. All that sitting around to be declared clean, or whatever. Just to end up on this, some of them.