Valerie Martin Read online

  I had come to the end of the pier, high above the swirling waters. It struck me that a fisherman would need a great deal of line just to get his hook down to fish level. The sky was overcast now; the moon obscured by a moving curtain of clouds. The inconstant moon. Madeleine would make a stunning Juliet. O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon, that monthly changes in her circled orb. I blessed Shakespeare, ever apt to the moment, whether it be for passion or reflection, and always sensitive to the bluster the petty human summons against the capricious cruelty of nature’s boundless dominion.

  Dreaminess settled upon me. The muscles in my shoulders and legs were vibrating from fatigue. It had been a long and eventful day. I stretched my arms over my head—yes, I, too, would sleep well—and brought my elbows to rest on the rail before me. There was a sharp crack; for a nanosecond I believed it was a shot fired behind me and I ducked my head. My elbows were moving forward and down, following the wooden rail as it slid away beneath them. Because I am tall, the lower rail struck just below my knees, serving to shove my feet out from under me. I struggled to wrench my upper body back from the edge but it was futile; gravity had the measure of me, and the only way open was down. I knew this with the physical clarity that short-circuits reason and redirects every atom toward survival. As I fell, I arched away from the pier, seeking to enter the water as far as possible from the great mass of wood that held it aloft. It was a fall into blackness. My eyes were useless, my ears weren’t even listening. The distance from the pier to the water was perhaps twenty feet, plenty of time, a lifetime, of falling. My arms stretched before me, my body straightened, approximating the proper diver’s position. I tensed for the moment of entry when I would have to hold my breath. Clever calculations filled the time. I should angle in shallowly—the water might not be deep and less of it could be more dangerous than more. If it was deep I could tuck in my head and roll back up, minimizing the risk of colliding with the pier. The tide would carry me in; I need only give in to it. Was one of my sandals still dangling from my toes? At last, WHAM, there it was: an icy clutch, sudden and absolutely silent, as if a bank vault had closed over me.

  The water was deep and oddly still. I executed my roll, kicked up to the surface, and took a quick swallow of air before I was clubbed back down by a crashing wave. I came up again, caught my breath, and treading furiously, tried to make out the pier or the light from shore. I couldn’t see a thing. Even the green snakes had abandoned me. It was all a swirling darkness above and below. I sensed that the current was behind me and struck out before it, but I had taken only a few strokes when, abruptly, as if I had collided with a truck on some aquatic highway, I was shoved sidelong and swept in the opposite direction. I went back to treading, trying to revolve in place to get my bearings, but no sooner had my feet stretched below my knees then they were swept firmly out from under me and my body forced to follow, slipped beneath the surface. I fought my way back up and stretched out flat, gobbling air. I was being whisked along with such dispatch I expected momentarily to be slapped into the shallows, but oddly there were no swells. Then, in the near distance, I spotted the white crest of a wave curling elegantly into its trough, a sight that filled me with such wonder and panic that a shout escaped my lips, for just as there could be no doubt that the wave was rolling into shore, it was equally irrefutable that I was being carried with overwhelming force in the opposite direction.

  Out to sea. A momentary contemplation of that phrase, of what it encompassed, enormous ships afloat in it, planes flying all night and into the morning to get over it, beneath its surface whales sleeping or singing, and at the end of it, Europe. I was in a vastness in which I had no more significance than an ant, but like an ant, I was programmed to struggle against the forces arrayed against me. I knew which way I didn’t want to go, and so I turned into the current and swam against it, summoning every bit of energy and skill I possessed. I didn’t pause to check my progress; I just kicked and revolved my arms, turning my head from side to side to suck in air. It was like running up the down escalator, any hesitation could only set me back. The water slipped over and under me, effortlessly pushing and pushing me, but I fought against it with a dreadful, stupid persistence I hadn’t known I possessed. My shoulders ached, my legs were losing propulsion, indeed I could hardly feel them. I tried to concentrate on my breathing, to keep it even—in, up, out, down—but I was missing a beat every few strokes, holding my breath in when I should have let it out, which I knew would exhaust me, but I couldn’t get on top of it. Start over, I thought, as if I was on a treadmill and could step outside the belt and catch my breath. I lifted my head and my legs sank down beneath me. I could see the dark bulk of the pier jutting out into the waves. It was far away, too far, I thought, and steadily receding. I wouldn’t make it, but the sight filled me with hope. Back to relentless swimming. I kicked and stroked, trying to stay as near the surface as I could because I felt less resistance there. But I was still having trouble breathing and the fatigue in my shoulders made it difficult to keep my movements organized. Grim resolve battled with increasing panic. My body was giving out on me, but my only choice was to forge on. I’d lost communication with my legs, my chest was sinking with every stroke, I was swallowing more water than air. I’m not going to make it, I thought. I’m drowning. “Help,” I heard myself cry, as my head slipped under the water. I thrashed back up, cried out again, “Help!” A fierce cramp in my right calf muscle sent a shock wave to my brain. I rolled onto my back, clutching my leg with one hand, treading with the free arm and good leg, but of course I sank again. Just kick through the pain, I thought, and I got back up, took a deep breath of air and switched to frog-like pumping of arms and legs, not because I thought it might help but because that was what my body did. I had run out of thoughts; only terror and sadness inhabited me, only emotions. That’s what we come down to after all.

  I struggled on, but I kept going under, each time a little longer, each breath of air more shallow than the last. It was silent below, above the only sound was my gasping and my heart pounding in my ears. “Help!” I heard myself cry as I went down and “Help!” again as I battled my way back into the air.

  “Be calm,” a voice commanded. Was it my own? No, it came to me from out of the air. In the next moment something big, something powerful slammed into my legs and grasped my waist. I kicked to free myself, but it held me fast, swarming up my body, pulling me down. A man’s head surfaced close to mine, his arms slipped under my own, holding me close. “Don’t fight me,” he said.

  I clutched his neck. “Save me,” I pleaded, clinging to him.

  “Don’t push me down, you idiot,” he said. “You’ll drown us both.” He grasped my hands and pulled them apart, pushing free of me.

  “No,” I cried. “Don’t leave me.”

  He caught hold of my shoulder and pulled it, turning me away from him. “Lie on your back,” he said. “Make yourself as flat as you can.”

  “I can’t,” I said, but I tried, and as my legs came up he brought his arm across my chest and pulled me in so that my head rested against his sternum.

  “That’s it,” he said. “I’ll keep your head up. Kick if you can.”

  “I can,” I said and I tried, but my legs were numb. We were moving, however, somehow he was ferrying me through the water, not against the current but across it, so that we were still being carried away from the shore. A peculiar lassitude had taken over my senses, but I made a feeble protest. “Wrong way,” I panted.

  “Please shut up,” he said.

  I couldn’t catch my breath; it was as if my lungs were frozen. Where was I? Of course, I concluded, this was a dream from which I would straightway awaken. Then I felt something swelling beneath me, lifting me so gently, and my rescuer as well, carrying us up, up, and I saw the stars, a sliver of the moon, and the twinkling of lights from the land toward which we were being forcefully conveyed on the long plume of a wave that, in the next moment, collapsed beneath us, leaving us founderi
ng before the onslaught of the next one. I clung to my companion and held my breath.

  When I opened my eyes again I was flat on my back on the sand and a man was kneeling over me, his eyes closed, his lips approaching mine like a lover. I rolled onto my side and coughed up a quantity of phlegm. He got to his feet, straddling me, without comment.

  “My God,” I said. “What happened?”

  “You passed out,” he said.

  Then I remembered the rail slipping away, my plunge into the waves, the current carrying me against my will. I turned onto my back and gazed up at him. “I was drowning,” I said. “You saved my life.”

  In the dim moonlight I could just make out his face. His dripping hair was dark and long, like mine, his eyes were deep set, heavy lidded, his jaw was strong. He was tall, like me, and handsome, like me. He considered me, still wheezing pitiably at his feet, while the waves pounded in and the moon, obscured by a passing cloud, cast us into darkness. I was conscious of how cold and wet the sand was, and how it gave beneath me, sucking at me, ready to cover me over like the rest of the debris disgorged and deposited on the shore by the ceaseless scouring of the tides. I was sick, weak, and grateful to be alive. My rescuer stepped away from me, addressing the air. “That was quite a performance, Ed,” he said.

  A deeper chill invaded my spine. Had I heard him correctly? “How do you know my name?” I asked.

  “Why shouldn’t I?”

  I pried myself out of the sand; just sitting required an exertion of energy that alarmed me. Where was my strength? “Because I don’t know you,” I said.

  He smiled at this, a mocking smile that took offense. “You know me, Ed,” he said. “I’m Guy Margate.”

  The name meant nothing to me but there was something familiar about him. I must have met him at some party, or in a bar. “Sorry,” I lied. “I didn’t recognize you. I’m not myself.”

  “Are you ever?”

  “What?”

  “I came out to have a smoke on the pier,” he said, “and I heard you screaming.”

  I staggered to my feet. “You saved my life,” I said again. “How can I repay you?”

  “Oh,” he said. “We’ll think of a way.”

  I dusted the sand off my legs, looking up and down the beach. We weren’t far from the pier. A car, creeping along the road, turned in toward the town.

  “Can you walk back to Teddy’s house?” he asked. “Or should I go get a car and drive you?”

  Teddy’s house. Of course. “You’re Peter Davis’s friend,” I said. “You came with him.”

  “That’s right. We just got in. You were out with Madeleine.”

  Madeleine. How long ago, that torrid, sandy coupling with Madeleine beneath the stars? It was all coming back to me now, my life. “I can walk,” I said.

  There wasn’t much in the way of conversation between us on the brief stroll back through the somnolent town. I was too exhausted to make small talk. I took Guy’s silence as a form of courtesy, allowing me to recover my bearings as well as my breath. As we turned the last corner, he said, “You don’t have any cigarettes, do you? I never did get my smoke.”

  “I had a pack on the porch, I left them there. They may be gone by now.”

  “I’ll check that out,” he said. The house was dark, and for a moment I feared we would have to rouse someone to let us in. I wasn’t up to talking about my misadventure. “It’s here,” Guy said, lifting a potted geranium and extracting a key.

  “How did you know it was there?” I asked.

  “Teddy told me. How else?” He slipped the key into the lock and pushed the door open, glancing back at me with a look I couldn’t read, though it wasn’t in any characterization friendly. Without another word, he switched on the hall light and went out to the porch. I dropped the key back under the pot, closed the door, trudged up the stairs to my room, where I peeled off my damp clothes and left them on the floor. Scarcely a minute after I stretched out on the bed, my head cradled in the luxurious down pillow, I was asleep.

  When I woke, the sun was blasting through my window and the sound of laughter floated in from the street. As there was no clock in my room, I had no idea what time it was. I indulged myself in the luxury of not having to care. The laughter drifted away; was it our group or another? At length, I sat up and looked around for my suitcase, which gaped open on an old-fashioned ribbon luggage rack near the door. My wadded swim trunks and T-shirt, still damp, gave off a faint scent of brine. The night came back to me, all of it. Madeleine and the magic green snakes, the fall from the pier and the irresistible current, the baffling appearance of Guy Margate, who seemed to know me though I felt more and more certain I’d never seen him before; who claimed he heard me screaming—was I screaming?—and plunged into the ocean to save my life.

  I pulled on a clean shirt and shorts and went down the hall to brush my teeth. The house was quiet; most of the bedroom doors stood open. I peeked in at Madeleine’s; the bed was neatly made, the suitcase closed, a bottle of water, half empty, and a glass occupied the bedside table. In the bathroom I confronted my reflection. I didn’t look good. Nearly drowning had left me pale and drawn. I remembered swimming and then the awful, constant pull of the water, dragging me along until I was too exhausted to resist. I slapped my face with cold water, ran a comb through my hair, and went down the back staircase to the kitchen. Teddy, sitting at the long wooden table perusing the pages of a newspaper, a half-full mug of coffee near to hand, looked up. “Here he is,” he said. “The drowned man.”

  So Guy had told the story. Well, why wouldn’t he? “What time is it?” I asked.

  “A little after noon.”

  “Is there any coffee?”

  “It’s in the carafe by the stove. Mugs on the hooks there. How are you feeling?”

  “I’ve been better.”

  “Bread by the toaster. Help yourself.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Where is everyone?”

  “They’re all at the beach burning themselves to crisps.”

  “But you didn’t go.”

  “Truth to tell, Edward, I loathe the beach. I never go out there if I can help it, even to chase women, which is the only conceivable reason a person in his right mind would go.”

  I pulled out a chair and sat across from him. “I think I agree with you.”

  He folded his paper. “You look like hell.”

  “Do I?”

  “Guy said you were nearly done for.”

  “Did he tell everyone, or just you?”

  “Everyone. At breakfast. The ladies were filled with admiration.”

  “He’s a powerful swimmer,” I said.

  “Turns out he was a lifeguard, several summers, all through high school. Rescue is one of his fortes.”

  “Lucky for me.”

  “Well, if it had been me on the pier you wouldn’t be feeling too lucky right now. You wouldn’t be feeling anything.”

  I detected an undertone of accusation in this remark, and it stung me. “No, I know it. I’m grateful, believe me. I’ll be in his debt forever.”

  Teddy got up to refill his cup. “When I think I might have invited you out here and on your first night you drowned. Jesus.”

  “I don’t know what happened. I got caught in some kind of undertow.”

  “A rip current,” Teddy corrected me. “Guy told us all about it. Some people call them riptides, but that’s incorrect. They run against the tide and open out in a mushroom shape. If you don’t fight them, eventually they thin out and dump you back into the tide. If you get caught in one all you have to do is swim parallel to the shore and you’ll get free.”

  “I didn’t know that. All I knew was I couldn’t get back.”

  “The girls were much edified. They all know what to do now, thanks to you.”

  “Are you mad at me, Teddy?” I said.

  “Good God, no.” He opened the refrigerator and peered at the contents. “I’m going to scramble eggs. Do you want some eggs?”


  “I do,” I said. “I’m starving.”

  “Bless those girls; they don’t eat it but they have brought home the bacon.”

  “I could go for bacon.”

  Cradling packages of eggs and bacon in one arm, he pulled down a skillet the size of a garbage-can lid from the constellation of cookware dangling over the stove.

  “So what do you think of this—”

  “Guy,” he said. “It’s a problem, the name.”

  “This guy, Guy,” I said.

  “I think he bears watching.”

  “Doesn’t immediately bowl you over with confidence?”

  “Yet, evidently, he’s a lifesaver.”

  “A lifeguard, at least.”

  “He looks a lot like you.”

  “Does he? I thought he did.”

  “He says he knows you.”

  “Maybe he does. I mean, obviously he does. But just between you and me, Teddy, I don’t remember the guy.”

  “Guy.”

  “Right.”

  Teddy had the burner up and was marshaling his forces in the skillet. “Peter likes him, at least he’s sympathetic to him, but not simpatico sympathetic; the other kind.”

  “What did the girls think of him?”

  “That’s one of the things that bear watching.” We heard voices from the porch, female laughter, high and bright and the screen door creaking on its hinges. “As you’re about to find out,” Teddy concluded.