All for Emily

I place my canoe at the water’s edge and get in. I grab sand in each hand and throw the handfuls at each other, closing my eyes to the sound the clumps make when they clash and sprinkle across my deck. The boat is quickly surrounded by water that takes the scattered sand back into its ebbs and flows as I look around Blacksod Bay. There’s an offshore breeze, strong enough to keep the waves up long enough to catch and ride. The ocean casts them into us in slow, lazy sets of six or so, swinging them around Achill Island. Along the surf little rainbows appear where green turns to foamy white in the sunlight. To my left a rip forms where the water that’s squashed into the bay slithers back out again to join the faster currents. Curlews swoop along the shoreline, zipping about in harmony. They jet past me and over my companion Joe and for a second I feel guilty. What I’m going to do feels like a betrayal of all this beauty.

I shout at Joe ‘Are you right?’ and he looks up with a ‘What do you think?’ face on. He’s struggling to attach his spray-deck, unwilling to cover the opening of his canoe the way I’ve showed him. His insistence on always being independent and unflappable, at the minute makes him look stupidly stubborn. I resist the urge to get out and do it for him, looking over the rolling ocean and thinking of Emily instead, realising that the feeling I get from being with her and the feeling I get from this scenery are nearly the same.

Joe’s ready, paddles in hand we stick our knuckles into the sand and push out into the bay. Over sandy water then into the froth and soup of broken waves. Joe starts to struggle, his inexperience showing as he rides the bumps but I know he’s okay. I keep a closer eye on him at the break, where the waves crest and crash onto our decks, water splashing into our faces. I taste salt. On a different day I’d be laughing now, spitting water and flicking sparkle off my gear as I push through the waves. But not today. Joe falls behind. I keep going until I am past the break and look back. A rising wave hides him from me until the nose of his yellow boat splashes colour against the sky, then the front hits the water with a conquering slap and he’s clear. In the calm we stop paddling. I look down at the water, drop my hand in and watch it bend and ripple under the surface, spines of light shine on lost pieces of seaweed floating in the green-blue beneath me. All tethers to the land have disappeared.

I look at Joe as we bob up and down, and then to my left, keeping an eye on the almost invisible rip that moves quick enough to swipe a man out to sea. Behind us Achill rises up from the water, like some unique beast resting in the evening sunshine. Something black flies down to make a splash nearby; a cormorant. I don’t wait to see it come up. I whistle loudly at Joe and he frowns towards me.

I know he hates all this. He would rather be in the pub now, watching Man United and banging heads with the men he’s been friends with since school. He’d never say that to Emily but he said it to me once, over a pub-time cigarette, not long after they’d gotten together. We were outside Mahan’s, mine and Emily’s local. For her sake I’d decided to get to know Joe some more. I started talking about wave formation and the effects of wave energy on people. He stopped me straight away, his big hand dismissing me while he stared out at the night.

‘All that bonding with the world is bull,’ he said.

I was happy about that at first. I thought it meant they wouldn’t last. But as time went by I saw how careful he was to hide his indifference. Paying only as much attention as expected, until Emily got sick.

I move closer to where the waves are forming, energy bursting up into crests as the sea gets too shallow to contain them. I give Joe the signal to stay where he is. He nods back, rising and dipping on an approaching wave. It starts to peak behind me, growing in size. I turn and paddle quickly, keeping pace as the wave sucks the water out from under me. It curls over as I sink into its trough and scoops up the boat. A shoulder of cresting foam forms to my left and starts to spill over, rushing and spitting, sounding like music or magic as I pick up speed and become one with its power. I dig the nose of the boat downwards and slide to the bottom of the wave, leaning right to carve back up along its glistening face, another shoulder forms on that side, giving chase as I straighten the boat on the last bit of green. The whole wave rages into white, sounds like all the shouts of the world together. Then its power is gone. I capsize on purpose, becoming ballast, for a second I’m churned in the wave’s weakened grip, bubbles fume around me and then leave me in stillness. I Eskimo-roll back up to see the wave lumbering on, fizzing white, spent. Another comes and I back paddle over it, stopping it catching me, letting it pass.

 

I remember the day in the hospital when Emily begged Joe to join me out here. The smell of bleach and illness filled the air. I was looking out the window, ignoring their whispered conversation until Emily’s voice rose slightly.

‘But that bay is my first love,’ she said ‘That stretch of sea, beach and sky.’

‘I know.’ he answered.

‘Then go for me? I want you to feel the touch of this world as I do. Bear witness for me.’

I was thinking another man would have turned to me, invited me into the discussion. But he kept his back to me. Kept me out.

‘I should stay. I should be here.’ His voice had that tone we all use for the sick. Delicate, patronising, paternal.

‘Being out there for me means more than your company right now. Trust me. You have the time.’

He leaned over her bed and slid his fingers into her hair. Her face moved for his hand. Every part of me knew he’d say no. But he said yes. Her face brightened with the word. Envy twisted in my guts.

I felt so angry. He’d never understood what we did together. This world is more a plaything to him than a parent. He is incapable of awe. Emily looked to me and I smiled at her.

‘Won’t you take him?’

‘Of course,’ I said, feeling both broken hearted and faithless.

 

To avoid the work of breaking through the forming waves again, I head for the rip. The rule of the rip is move or you’ll be moved. Sit on it too long and you will quickly float miles out from shore. I take advantage of this as it slices into the waves and conveys me out to sea, and then paddle briskly to escape its grip. When I reach Joe I point towards beach. It’s his turn. He heads to the area where I caught my wave, looking detached. I wonder whether he is hiding his nerves or is actually not one bit afraid. Either way it’s obvious he will never love this like Emily and I do. He’s hardly here at all, simply doing this for her and looking for nothing from the day but her thanks. I would do or think anything for her, become anything she wanted.

He reads the feelings on my face and gives me an indifferent look that infuriates me. A look I’ve hated since the first time I saw it. Years ago now, when I’d brought Emily to a concert in Dublin of some singer-songwriter that I kept trying to turn her onto. Joe was a friend of a friend that we bumped into during the gig. Once he saw Emily I couldn’t get rid of him. He even talked his way right back to our hotel. I didn’t know how to stop him. All night I stood by watching their sparks fly, silent and seething. Then he was gone, and Emily headed to bed. Pretending to be a gentleman I refused to let her go up to her room alone. She looked put out. I felt under pressure and panicked in the corridor. I was so drunk I can’t remember if I said I loved her or not. But it doesn’t matter. Whatever I said she still hurried to her door rather than kiss me. I remember wondering why she knocked. Then Joe answered. He stood at her door with that same expression. It was like looking at stone. He closed the door and I went back to my empty room. I couldn’t sleep. I stayed awake all night wishing he didn’t exist.

 

Now we’re here. Emily’s man and me on her special stretch of world. The wave Joe is catching grows to an enormous size. He starts to surf and is in control for a moment but then the wave crashes, closing over him and tipping him head first into the deep. Being unable to roll, his boat is beaten about upside down until he surfaces beside it. His paddle disappears but he doesn’t freak out like most beginners. Floating by his boat he slowly waves his arms back and forward in a call for help. He floats towards the rip. I sit and watch.

My boat rises with the next wave, as I back paddle over it I feel as if I’m setting it on Joe. Now it’s my turn to watch as someone’s life is swept away.

The second wave roars onto him. When it breaks I see his arms, then his legs as he’s flipped and bounced around before being released, gulping for air while the wave rushes his boat towards the shore. He tries to swim to me but the cross-current keeps carrying him towards the rip. Another waves hits and I feel compelled to pretend to save him. Timing it just right, getting closer as he is taken into the faster water. I reach the point where the flows meet and stop just before I cross into his current. Joe swims for me as fast as he can, really working hard. But in the grip of the rip there’s nowhere to go. As I watch he stops swimming and floats away calling my name. I turn my back on him and think of Emily.

She’s lying in hospital waiting for us to return. But now I’ll be the one holding her hand everyday. I see the curlews flicker along the beach again. Joe doesn’t understand why I’m not going out for him. His shouts float towards me. They hit my ears like whispers.

I paddle back to the beach. The waves want to play but I avoid catching them. I think of the things I’m going to say to Emily. I’ll recommend that she should not be told about Joe. I’ll argue with the doctors that she hasn’t long left. I’ll say whatever it takes to spare her from grief, to prevent Joe’s memory from coming between us. I’ll take pictures of out here, get them enlarged to hang like masterpieces in her room. I’ll encourage her to dream of this place, fill her heart with its magic again. I’ll talk with her of her future, all the things she’ll be able to do if she recovers - when she recovers. I’ll give her hope. When she’s better I’ll ask her to move in with me.

I reach the shore, walk up to where Joe and I left our gear on the rocks. I throw aside some flares and rummage for our phones wondering which one to use to make the emergency call. Joe’s wallet falls onto the sand, and his Zippo lighter. I unlock his phone. There’s a picture of him and Emily as wallpaper, some place in autumn, her head resting on his shoulders, his arm outstretched to take the snap. It looks like he’s giving her a piggyback. The bottom of the screen says 5 missed calls from the hospital and a voicemail. It’s Emily’s father, asking Joe to get to the hospital as soon as he can, his voice as cold as the waves - ‘She’s getting worse.’

I look out to sea. The sun is starting to dip in the sky. Joe is a spec in the sparkles between the waves and the island. The rip has released him and he’s trying to swim back in again. From that far out he hasn’t got a hope. The flow outside the bay will carry him out into the Atlantic to drown or die of cold. In my mind I see Emily’s face when I enter the hospital, her last dream failing when I arrive without Joe.

I drop the phones and grab the flares, attach them to my buoyancy and jump back into my canoe. The waves try to stop me getting out to open sea. I grit my teeth and smash through them. I find the rip, paddle non-stop, eyes on the nose of my boat, stabbing the water with stroke after stroke. My shoulders ache, my muscles shake with the constant work. My mind chants in time with my body’s rhythm, Don’t drown Joe, don’t drown.

When I reach the open sea between the bay and Achill there’s another cormorant there, floating, looking at me.

I see Joe’s buoyancy, lying limp and empty on the water, probably taken off to help him swim faster. If he gets cramp he’ll drown without it. I think of jumping out of my boat and swimming under, finding him sinking downwards, his last gasps bubbling past me. Then I see him in the distance, half a mile or so towards the edge of the bay, trying to swim across the flow that carries him out sea.

I paddle for him, muscles trembling; I’ve nothing left when I reach him. I call his name. He sees me and turns. I paddle closer, show him the flares and pretend they were the reason I went to shore. His eyes say he doesn’t care. I put my hand out, help him onto the back of my boat and check our position in the sea.

We’ve floated a long way off shore. The ocean moves in huge swells. The sky is darkening. From this far out it looks impossible to reach the land, especially with the extra weight. But I have to try.

I crack a flare and shoot it into the air, just in case. In its pink-red glow I hear Joe mumbling and realise he’s thanking me over and over. I turn and look at him, he’s looking around at the sea and the sky and the craggy back of Achill. His expression is sort of broken, but infused with awe.