The storm had been threatening all day, enveloping the town in a suffocating blanket of heat and lethargy. It finally lost patience as darkness fell, breaking over the low-slung buildings in a torrent of rain, accompanied by thunderclaps and lightning bolts. The wind was slamming doors as I walked into the downstairs bar that night, and Matthew was hurriedly pulling the shutters closed. He was normally on his way home by then, but no one was going anywhere until the storm passed, that much was clear.
The bar was almost empty. I had ventured downstairs to escape my long and gloomy room, with its anaemic pools of light and colony of insects, and maybe get myself a cool drink, but the young barman was asleep and I was reluctant to wake him up. Instead I looked for a comfortable corner where I could read my tattered Thomas Hardy – a surreal choice in that land of palm trees and sugar cane, discovered in a second-hand bookshop in Adelaide – and sit out the storm.
“Hi, Anna!”
Matthew waved, giving me one of his brilliant grins as I made for the armchair by the far wall, which I knew from experience was the least uncomfortable. A big, burly man, Mathew was one of the most cheerful people I had ever met, with an energy that would have made him rich had he been able to bottle it. As far as I was able to fathom, in addition to his stall in the market, he had a thriving taxi business, and a van he always managed to fill with tourists for trips to the best beaches on the island.
The armchair was big, and I managed to arrange myself relatively easily, my legs tucked to one side and my book balanced on the opposite arm. It was a familiar position, for over the previous few days I had grown used to whiling away the hours. This was a town, indeed a country, which rolled up its pavements and boarded up its shops at eight o’clock and where no buses, or anything else for that matter, ran on a Sunday. Since the coup, the islands had become ever more firmly entrenched in the Pacific Bible Belt and the entire country closed down at the ring of a church bell. I was waiting for a boat to the remoter islands where the absence of public transport wouldn’t make much difference, and I had been waiting for some time.
Engrossed in events in Wessex, I didn’t pay much attention at first to the appearance of the thin man, but he was impossible to ignore for long. Demanding service in a distinctly Antipodean accent, his voice resounding pugnaciously over the rain, he woke the barman and took over the room. Glancing towards the bar, I saw a wiry figure slouched awkwardly at the counter and ordering a beer that was probably not his first of the evening.
The barman – boy, really – was now thoroughly awake, but the newcomer’s belligerence and accent confused him, and it was only natural that he should ask the man to repeat what he had said. This only served to provoke, however.
“A beer, you dimwit,” the thin man bellowed, slamming the top of the bar with his fist and making the barman jump and hurry to fetch a glass. It was at this point that Matthew sauntered over to the thin man’s side.
“Hey, Jack,” he said. “No need to shout. We can hear you.”
The man, Jack, grunted and looked around the bar, his odd, squinting gaze taking everything in, and I quickly retreated behind my book. To no avail. Belligerent as he was, I was to find Jack had a need to talk, and Matthew had heard his tale before.
So Jack shambled across the bar, in a relatively straight line, as I had known he would. The feeling reminded me of the days when I commuted into London, and the odder type of person I inevitably seemed to attract, rather like iron filings to a magnet, on the 7.45 to Victoria.
Jack put his beer down on the table wish a crash, spilling some, and lowered himself laboriously into the chair opposite.
I applied myself assiduously to Hardy.
But he wasn’t ready to talk just yet. First things first. Surreptitiously watching him sip his beer, I saw the look of concentration on his face change to an expression of disgust. Glowering in the general direction of the barman, he yelled indignantly, “You call this beer? A sorry excuse for beer, that’s what it is. Pommie beer is better than this.”
I had left it too late to leave unobtrusively, and a mixture of embarrassment and obstinacy made me stay put. Sinking deeper into my chair, I told myself that, not only did I have no desire to go back to my gloomy room, I hadn’t fled the quicksand of suburbia to be intimidated by a drunk. I could have done that at home.
Matthew came to my rescue. Ambling over from the bar, he put his hand on the thin man’s shoulder and whispered conspiratorially, “If you behave yourself Jack, I may just let you have some of my private supply of Tooheys.” He winked at me over the top of the thin man’s head. “For a consideration, of course.”
Jack looked up at him, and a grin slowly spread across his sun-burnt and alarmingly lean face.
“You’re a prince, Matthew,” he said.
The big man laughed, and walked off, heading towards the back room where he evidently kept his private supply.
“You can always count on Matthew,” said Jack. “This town would come to a halt without him.” He turned to glance back at the hapless barman, and the glower returned. “Shame there aren’t more like him.”
Matthew reappeared, a bottle in his hand, and it turned out to be just the thing. Opening it with a flourish, he offered the bottle to Jack who tasted it with appropriate solemnity. Upon Jack’s sigh of approval Matthew laughed and went to pour a drink for himself. Quiet returned, the only sounds those of the storm outside, the rain drumming on the verandah roof and the wind whipping the trees.
“So, where are you from?” asked Jack, his disposition cheerier now that the beer problem had been solved.
“England,” I said.
“A Pom, eh?” he sighed theatrically. “Oh well, I guess it can’t be helped.”
I wasn’t quite sure what to say to that, but I had the uncomfortable feeling I ought to say something. A polite upbringing can be a cursed thing. So it was that I asked him what he did here in the islands, and sparked off a monologue that lasted until the early hours.
Suddenly animated, Jack sat up ramrod straight. “I am searching for the perfect wave,” he declared. “I’ve seen the blueprint, back in Australia. Carved in rock, fifteen metres high, poised on the brink of breaking. The brink. I’m going to find it here. Forget Hawaii, this is the place.”
He was staring at me intently. At least I think he was. While one eye bored into mine, the other looked over my shoulder towards the bar, as if to catch the barman’s attention. It was disconcerting.
His face seemed to soften then, and he smiled, his odd eyes lighting up.
“I also teach English in my spare time,” he added.
He was a lucky man, by his own account. Matthew had introduced him to the best surf and the best rum on the island, and his periodic outbursts did not bother the local constabulary unduly. On the contrary, he was a source of amusement in a town where little happened. Life wasn’t bad.
“Not bad at all,” he said, but the merry glint in his eye faded, as the cloud of memory drifted past.
“I had my own English school in Japan once,” he said. “In Tokyo. Made a lot of money. Got married there, too. Mitsuko was something, let me tell you. Razor sharp. She kept me on my toes, did Mitsuko. And she was lovely. Not a head-turner, maybe, but she was beautiful to me.”
Absently, he ordered another couple of beers, including one for me, and this time he didn’t complain. The barman scurried away while the going was good.
Mitsuko’s parents hadn’t been entirely happy about the marriage, but Jack and Mitsuko didn’t care. They were in love, and disapproval was romantic.
They had a good life in Japan but, a few years later, Jack become restless and a little homesick and decided to pack up the school. Mitsuko wanted to see Australia, so they travelled around the country before setting up house in an affluent Sydney suburb. He continued to teach and she enrolled at the university.
“She was a chemist, working on a PhD,” he said. “We both worked long hours, so we didn’t have the time together that we should have had. Never enough time. Still, we did always go to the beach at weekends. Mitsuko thought the sight of me on a surfboard was the funniest thing.”
He sat back in his chair. “It was good to hear her laugh.”
He didn’t say anything more for a long while, and I thought he had finished, that he was lost in a sun-dappled memory of days at the beach with a petite woman wearing a big hat, against a backdrop of crashing surf.
“Miksuko had cancer,” he said after a moment. “We were thinking about children when we found out. Good job we did find out, I reckon. I don’t think I’d make a good single parent.”
He finished his beer in one swallow before continuing. “It was too advanced. The doctors said there was nothing they could do. I wanted to go to pieces, but I couldn’t. I had to be strong for Mitsuko. I had to try, anyway. As it was, she was strong enough for both of us. She never complained. She was brave, much braver than me.”
I think he had forgotten I was there.
“And then she died.” His voice had become very soft, and I had to strain to hear. “I developed my taste for beer, among other things, I got to like it so much I lost my job. I hardly noticed. I could only think of how it was too late to say all the things I wanted to say. Anyhow, I left Sydney because it reminded me of her. But I soon found that everywhere reminded me of her. Even places we never went to together.”
He leaned forward, animated and intense.
“The best waves come and go in the blink of an eye,” he said. “If you’re slow, you miss them. But when I catch one, I can hear her. I can hear her laugh. When I’m out there, she’s still with me.”
I didn’t know what to say, but it didn’t matter. Jack wanted to talk, but he didn’t want conversation. And so I discovered the eloquence of silence.
The wind had died down, and the patter of raindrops on corrugated iron roofs was the only sound. Jack was on the brink of sleep, and I reached over to ease the beer glass gently from his hand, as Matthew opened the shutters and peered outside. I could see a hint of dawn in the eastern sky.
The worst of the storm was over and Matthew prepared to make his way home, but first he draped a blanket over Jack’s thin shoulders.
“It’s not the first time he’s slept here,” he said.
The next morning, I awoke to a room no longer gloomy, but bathed in sunlight, a confused memory of beaches and surf and sad laughter echoing in my mind. Downstairs, Jack was nowhere to be seen, and I wondered if he would ever hear Mitsuko’s laughter in the surf. Standing on the verandah, I felt a sudden surge of optimism as I surveyed the town; a breeze was gently whistling through the trees and everything looked fresh and new, cleansed by the storm. Maybe today I would catch my boat and Jack would find the perfect wave.
You never know.
