Too Close to the Wind Read online

  Too Close to the Wind

  A Novel

  Richard Attree

  Copyright © 2019 by Richard Attree

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, objects, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  To my wife, Nikki, with whom I’ve shared more than half my life, and without whom this novel would not have been written.

  Contents

  Part I

  1. A Ghost In El Médano

  2. Drifting

  3. Heaven Or Hell?

  4. The Abyss

  5. Terra Firma

  Part II

  6. Salsa On Speed

  7. Voodoo Child

  8. Learning Curve

  9. Día De Muertos

  10. In Transit

  Part III

  11. The Fremantle Doctor

  12. Brothers In Arms

  13. The Bush Of Ghosts

  14. This Land Is Our Land

  15. Dreamtime Plant Products

  16. The Consortium

  17. Fall From Grace

  18. On The Run

  19. Flight

  20. Missing Pieces

  Part IV

  21. The Troubles

  22. The Craic

  23. The Cliffs Of Moher

  24. To The Edge Of The Earth

  25. Epilogue: Why?

  Afterword

  A Note to my Readers

  FootNotes

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Part I

  THE ATLANTIC

  “To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.”

  (Friedrich Nietzsche)

  1

  A Ghost In El Médano

  The Atlantic. Monday, October 26, 2015, 07:50. I’m surprised to find myself still alive as the first streaks of light distinguish sky from sea. At least I hope I am, but it’s far from certain.

  After drifting on my board for twenty-four hours there’s not much left of my sanity. Perceptions and thoughts are floating around but it’s not clear whose they are. Voices crowd my head, competing for ownership. There’s also a whole heap of pain, but who’s feeling it? Where the hell am I and how did I get here?

  Then I notice something that persuades me I’m either dreaming, hallucinating, or dead. As the sun climbs out of the sea a shape emerges with it. At first it’s just a dot, then a mysterious blob travelling towards me on a collision course.

  I rub my salt-encrusted eyes, trying to focus on the mirage, expecting it to disappear. Instead, it gets bigger, coming straight out of the sun, backlit like some epic Hollywood vision of an alien spaceship. From somewhere there’s a hideous cackle of ironic laughter, possibly mine.

  “Mate, this is ridiculous!” a voice-in-my-head sneers. “You really think your story deserves such a blockbuster ending?”

  The apparition is a hundred metres away and still heading straight at me. Pure white, glistening in the dawn, perfectly reflected in the mirror-flat sea. I’ve never believed in a supernatural being but now I’m not so sure that God is dead. If this is the kind of show he puts on to welcome a soul into the After Life then he can count me in. “Hallelujah, I’m a believer!” my voices sing, like a demented gospel choir.

  The previous day—the day I should have drowned, started well enough … when I opened my eyes it was blowing a hoolie! Of course, the sangría and cerveza had been flowing in the bar where I worked and Saturday night had already become Sunday morning before I staggered back to my apartment. I woke with a hangover, as usual … but my friend, the wind, was rattling the shutters, urging me to get out of bed even before the sun hit my window.

  Looking out, the mountains were caught in that unnaturally pink light. The sky is immense here and every dawn is a performance. The beach was still in shadow, deserted, but white horses were dancing towards the bay, driven on by Los Alisios, the northeast trade-winds. Now I was awake, the hangover forgotten, and the day had a purpose.

  The wind, waves and my windsurfing board had been my only friends lately, the only reasons to get out of bed voluntarily. My life had fallen apart and I’d been existing as a recluse, a ghost in El Médano, the small Canarian surf town where I’d been living for the past few months—although to call it ‘living’ would be to flatter my existence. I avoided people, so I had no other friends and I’d made no enemies. I was neither liked nor hated, just ignored.

  For a while, after that Sunday I was the talk of the town—much better known as a missing person than as the sad loner who nobody would miss. There was even a mention in the local newspaper, La Opinión. When no body turned up most people assumed I was at the bottom of the Atlantic or in some lucky shark’s stomach. The story died and I was soon just a ghost again.

  So, the day was a disaster but it started promisingly … Conditions looked exceptional and I had a new friend. Stepping onto a brand new board for the first time is always a special moment for a windsurfer—like launching a ship. We might not smash open a bottle of champagne but she’d been well toasted the previous night. Now I was gagging to ride her—perhaps that’s why it all went pear-shaped.

  The wind was perfect for a 4.7 metre sail—every wave-sailor’s favourite size and the swell had been building all night. The waves on the reef looked perfecto—decent size in the sets, peeling cleanly. I’d have them to myself for at least the next hour if I got my act together—that’s how early it was. A few tourists were having breakfast in the cafe on the boardwalk but the surf shops weren’t open yet. There was still nobody on the beach and I was the only windsurfer rigging up.

  I grabbed my new board and ran my hands over her flowing lines. It was a little ritual I had—a pause before I entered the fray, a moment to be inspired by the craftsmanship I held in my hands. She was made by the local shaper: Rick, of ‘WHY Custom Wave Boards’—a classic, elegant shape with minimal but effective graphics. I’d asked Rick to make me a pure white board with just his logo in bold black 3-D letters. I told him I wanted something unique, a one-off, so I requested that he add a question mark and I specified that my board should be the only one ever produced with this.

  I gazed at the board and the customised graphics confronted me with a simple, stark question: “WHY?” I took a moment to consider my answer. From now on this would be part of the ritual—a moment to remind myself why I spent so much time and resources on this obsessive activity; remind myself how lucky I was to be able to escape gravity and surf the wind. To anyone else she was just a chunk of foam, fibreglass, carbon and epoxy but I was about to trust her with my life. Her logo was a reminder: never take this for granted.

  My moment of reflection observed, I threw the equipment together, working on autopilot. My brain didn’t need to be engaged—I could rig in my sleep. The routine was the same every time and a decade of performing it whenever my friend, the wind, called had ingrained it in my subconscious. I unrolled the sail onto the boardwalk, sleeved the mast and pulled on the downhaul without taking my eyes from the horizon. I clamped the boom to the mast and attached the outhaul, my focus still on the waves.

  A set rolled in and I watched as geometric lines of surf marched across the reef. I picked one and imagined myself riding it, my body making strange little movements like a bizarre dance to a private soundtrack. Taking my eyes from the water I met a tourist
’s startled gaze, bemused by my antics, intrigued that my morning had such a clear purpose. I nodded distractedly, glanced down and was surprised to find I had everything ready to go.

  A gust of wind swirled up the sand towards me, tugging at my sail impatiently. I Jammed the rig into my board and sprinted to the water.

  That was my first mistake: not pausing for a second to check the equipment. A windsurfing rig is attached to the board by something called a ‘universal joint’ (‘UJ’). There’s a clue in that innocuous-sounding jargon. The term: ‘universal’ is normally reserved for something important, crucial even. Take the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, for instance. It’s more than a heap of words hastily flung together—it’s a milestone document in the history of humanity, carefully constructed to safeguard lives and liberty.

  The UJ is similarly worth respecting. It’s more than a bendy piece of rubber connecting board and rig—it’s a windsurfer’s lifeline and if you care about your life you look after your lifeline. You check it before you launch and replace it before the rubber perishes. Unfortunately, that Sunday morning I didn’t care about my life. I was desperate to leave it behind on the boardwalk and escape to that other world where I danced on water. All I wanted that morning was to be gone with the wind.

  My second error was to sprint to the water without telling a soul. I was alone, of course, no windsurfing buddy to share the session with me. But if I’d just strolled over to the cafe and said hola to the staff, mentioned that I was the first one launching—the guinea pig testing the wind ... perhaps they’d have remembered me and called the socorristas when I didn’t come back.

  Maybe the drink had something to do with it. The alcohol was still clouding my brain, dulling the pain as usual. I was hung-over, dehydrated. I hadn’t had breakfast, not even a sip of water. My most serious mistake was to take my unstable mind onto the water with me … but even that shouldn’t have threatened my life.

  I could normally rely on my fitness, technique and experience. I was twenty-five and in good shape (apart from the lack of sleep, dehydration and hangover), with a decade of expert windsurfing. It wouldn’t have been a problem if Sunday’s session had been normal. But it wasn’t. It was the day I should have drowned. Survival depended on my state of mind … and that was a mess.

  The previous evening had brought this home to me. Ironically, as a loner I was a good listener. I could sympathise with other people’s problems because I had plenty myself. It made me a good barman. Customers were happy to confess their darkest secrets until the small hours of the morning. Unfortunately, there was nobody there for me when I dragged myself back to my lonely apartment.

  El Médano was a party town, an ‘Endless Summer’ kind of place, a town with no winter where everybody pursued sun, sex, surf, and fun—endlessly. Médanites wanted to let the good times roll, not waste them with a sad loner.

  Most nights I drank a fair bit to drown my sorrows. I guess that’s why I took the job in the bar. I could handle drink well enough, it was the mornings that were the problem—except when the wind was blowing—then I could forget the loneliness, the depression, and the hangovers for a few hours.

  Saturday night was always a busy shift. As usual, there was a fiesta in party-town and the Endless Summer people were in full-on Saturday Night Fever mode. They invaded the bar with their sangría-fuelled games, their egos and selfies, while my mood became darker as the night wore on.

  Rick, the WHY Boards shaper, had promised to pop in for a drink to celebrate my new board. I was hoping he might provide some relief from the relentless posturing, perhaps even a chance to make a friend in the town. He was the one person in El Médano I’d managed to connect with—as a customer, at least … But that night only demonstrated how shallow the connection was.

  It didn’t help that both of us had drunk a few too many, or that a Flamenco session in the bar made conversation impossible without yelling at each other, but my inability to communicate went deeper. You could describe it as existential (if you were being pretentious)—a classic example of Sartre’s ‘hell is other people’. The problem, my hell, was that other people had the impression I thought I was superior, cooler than them, simply because I said so little. But they couldn’t be more wrong ...

  I was on the run from my past. I’d made some serious mistakes, betrayed the people who trusted me, fucked up my life. Now I found it hard to trust myself, let alone anyone else. I had such a poor opinion of myself that I rarely thought I had anything worth saying.

  When Rick walked into the bar that Saturday night my self-esteem was at an all-time low. But he didn’t know that. He didn’t even know my name. He propped himself on a bar stool ordered a cerveza, and shouted to me:

  “Hombre, people tell me you surf well, you know what you want from a board, you look like a hardcore dude—with the tan, dreadlocks, tattoos—the ladies must love you, no? But you’re a bit of a mystery ...”

  I shrugged. Compliments only made me worry about a hidden agenda.

  “I mean, what are you doing here anyway? You’re an Ozzie, right? A long way from home, eh?”

  I muttered that I was backpacking around Europe and I’d heard that the windsurfing in El Médano was good, but it didn’t satisfy his curiosity:

  “So, I’m a bit of a Clint Eastwood fan and when you walked into my workshop you reminded me of his character in ‘Fistful of Dollars’...”

  “—”

  “You know, the ‘Man with No Name’?”

  “?”

  “You don’t give much away do you, amigo …?”

  “—” There was nothing I could say to him.

  Rick had a notoriously short fuse. He didn’t suffer fools gladly and now he was irritated, as well as curious:

  “I mean, just who do you think you are muchacho? You walk into my workshop as cool as Clint, asking for customised graphics that I’d never even thought of. I make you a board that’s as good as anything I’ve ever made, but I don’t even know your name …”

  “My name is Nick” I replied. “But you can call me: ‘The Man with No Name’ if you like.”

  He laughed and shook my hand. That simple touch was the first genuine warmth anyone had shown me in months. The ice had been broken. Now I was desperate to reach out and tell him about the hell I was going through. But there was a wall around me—a wall I’d built to protect myself.

  “Look mate, I don’t think I’m cool like Clint Eastwood. I’m not even ‘interesting’. I’m just someone who’s fucked up their life and doesn’t want to screw anybody else’s up. So I keep things to myself, OK?”

  That came out far more aggressively than I’d intended. Rick put his hand up apologetically and looked away, embarrassed.

  “Hey, no problem hombre! Fine with me. Sorry to bother you, Nick.”

  He drained his glass and got up to leave. Regret surged through me:

  “No, I’m sorry Rick.”

  I was sweating now, dizzy—was it the alcohol or the onset of a panic attack?

  “Look mate, I don’t talk much because I don’t have much to say.”

  Rick nodded. I ploughed on, desperate to explain myself, to connect with him, but I only dug myself a deeper hole:

  “Maybe it’s the same with Clint? Perhaps he’s not a super cool loner dude, just a bit shy? You know, lacking confidence, low self-esteem—that kind of thing?”

  Now I’d definitely gone too far. Rick scowled at me like a priest who’s just been told the Pope was a secret transvestite. He muttered something inaudible and turned towards the exit. Then, remembering I was one of his customers, he wished me goodnight:

  “Well, buenas noches Nick. Good to, um ... talk to you. I hope you like the new board. It’s looking good for tomorrow, eh? ¡Hasta mañana! See you on the water, maybe.”

  With that he walked out of the bar, leaving me alone with my demons and fifty drunk revellers.

  Saturday night had already become Sunday morning when I called time, kicked out the remaini
ng punters and staggered back to my apartment, taking my emotional baggage with me. And that’s where it should have stayed. But instead, I spent a sleepless few hours chewing over my problems and then hung-over, worse-for-wear, I brought all that angst with me onto the water.

  Sunday, 08:00. The session, like the day, started promisingly. The wind was kind to me as I launched. I powered through the shore-break, celebrating by throwing myself into a forward loop. The world turned arse over tit and I landed still planing. Yeeha!

  It was something of a breakthrough moment. For one heady moment my life was turned on its head and suddenly it seemed more bearable from that perspective. And to land it like that! I looked around to see if anyone had witnessed it but there was only empty water, a deserted beach, and the few tourists on the boardwalk busy with their breakfast.

  The planing loop didn’t just inspire me though, it unhinged me. With hindsight, I see it as another of my mistakes. Subjecting my unstable brain to that bare-knuckle ride only invited the chaos back in. My blood was instantly saturated with adrenaline and the rush was like an acid trip. From then on I was as high as one of those damn kites and rational thought was missing in action.

  I blasted a kilometre upwind to the waves at El Muelle, the harbour wall, where I spent most of my sessions. It was my spot, but it could be horribly crowded. Not that morning though. For the best part of an hour, I had the waves to myself—as I’d hoped when I braved a hangover to greet the dawn. It was one of the best hours of my life, in fact.