surfcheck

Winner of the 2000 Byron Bay Nicholas Shand Short Story Competition

Friday

6.30 am. No swell. Not a ripple. The sky is bright and delicate like fine china. It’s been like this for weeks.

Michelle says I should pay more attention to the outgoing tide of our relationship and less to the ebbs and flows of something over which I have no control.

Before she was pregnant, Michelle surfed a longboard. In fat slow waves she danced along the deck in balletic control, lifted up by waves too subtle for me. In bigger waves she would swoop down the line as I cut up her wake in buzzing pursuit.

I kiss baby Karina during her morning feed. She kneads her mother’s breast like a kitten. Michelle’s tired eyes remind me of something I can’t quite remember.

I get home late from the nursery, smelling of fish emulsion and day dreaming of swell and sleep.

Saturday

6 am. Michelle plucks Karina from her breast with a pink popping sound. Karina’s arms move in fat lost circles as she is held out to me. I take her with me for the morning surfcheck. She squints warmly towards the sea and her fishy lips suck. She says ‘num num’.

But the sun keeps shining and the horizon is stubbornly still.

Monday

7 am. I ask Michelle if she wants to come and check the surf with me and Karina. Michelle says that blue hurts her eyes.

I lift Karina out of her cot. Michelle says things have to change. I tell her it’s autumn now and the swell should pick up any day. She rolls her eyes and turns away.

Wind has picked up. Karina looks up from the hug-a-bub and puts her fingers inquiringly into my mouth. When I ask her what she thinks of the surf, she says ‘glub glub’. I think she’s learning.

A small bank has formed out front and a light offshore holds up short neat crests.

Back at home, Michelle steps meaningfully around my board standing in the hallway. I offer her the nice little bank out the front, as an apology, ‘Why don’t you bring your board and I’ll sit with Karina on the beach?’ She looks panicked. It’s lost out the back somewhere, she says.

I catch a few small waves and tuck into a tube that collapses softly on my head. The wind begins to blow rain. The colour drains from the ocean. Swollen phallic bluebottles lie stranded and mangled in clusters at the high-tide mark. The horizon is jagged and unsure and cold white tufts litter the ocean. My feet go blue as I walk home through the storm.

Wednesday

5.30 am. I wipe the dust off Michelle’s nine footer, scrub it with wax and put it in the hallway.
I drive to Belongil. A lot of closeouts, but worth a go. The sky is low and dark and the rain hits the water at an angle. The wind pushes hard up the face as I take off, then releases me into a fast bottom turn. The lip closes in front and I push for speed to make it round the section, I beat it and jump up to the lip in a re-entry before the wave jacks up again and punches me down to the sand. My chest aches with the loneliness of being held down.

Michelle has cooked dinner. Her eyes are swollen and dry, and there are two moist stains on her T-shirt where her nipples are.

Karina turns in her highchair and rubs mashed potato into the wall.

Michelle wonders how much I hate her. I wish I could tell her how she makes me think of a churning southerly swell at Cosy Corner, unprotected, beautiful and empty, too angry for anything to penetrate. I try and soothe her, I tell her that even the biggest southerlies can be surfable, if there’s an offshore wind; a chance to straighten things out.

I’m waiting for Broken Head to line up properly. Day after tomorrow maybe.

Karina opens her mouth and screams like a banshee.

Friday

7.00 am. Rain and wind again. The dunes of Suffolk are washing away despite the work of the Dune Care people. Their thick timber logs lie useless in the sand.

There’s no one else out, it’s mid-tide and crunching on the sandbank.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow Broken Head will shape up.

Michelle’s board has been moved to the front porch. I stand out in the sheeting rain to help Michelle take the wet washing from the line. The water runs down her face and I catch it with my finger. She lets me hold her in the rain.

Saturday

9 am. Michelle stands in the doorway with her board. Our neighbour Jedda stands there too and Karina is on her hip. Karina claps her hands and laughs as dribble dances on the tip of her chin.

Come on, Michelle says, It’s five foot and clean. Jedda’s gunna look after Karina for a while.
It’s breaking out on the point in clean lines, but we walk to the north where there are fewer people, it’s not as predictable but it still looks good.

I hear Michelle suck in her breath as the cold water creeps into her wetsuit.

I pretend I’m not watching her every stroke.

Out the back, we rise and fall together, waiting, and I look away, thinking she’ll wait out a few sets.

When the first wave rolls towards us, I paddle over it. It’s big and fast and the lip is thick. But as I look over my shoulder for Michelle, I see her turn and paddle for it.

She jumps to her feet in a steep, late take-off and glides high on the face, then drops out of view. I crane my neck looking for her. I begin paddling inside. I can’t see her anywhere.

Finally I spot her.

Way down the line, she is flying high on the lip in a powerful floater.

Then she is paddling back out towards me, and her head is thrown back in laughter.

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