1
Adam rose early next morning because he wanted to surprise her and make her breakfast before she woke up. But to his astonishment, she was already up and busy in the kitchen making coffee, toast and cereal.
‘Good morning, Libby.’
‘Good morning, Adam. Look at the barrels.’ She pointed through the kitchen window at the beach in the distance below. Adam looked out the window. He could see the whole southern half of the beach from his kitchen. He realised that he had forgotten about surfing. It had become something he did years before, when he was younger with time to travel to the point breaks. He couldn’t believe that he’d been looking at good surf for months but it never registered.
‘I apologise for raiding your kitchen.’
‘There’s no need to apologise.’
‘I woke up looking at that,’ she pointed out the window again, ‘and just went mental.’
Adam noticed that there was a light, westerly breeze blowing out of the valley, hollowing out a clean, four-foot peak with lefts and rights coming off it. The right looked best as it was walling up more and breaking along a deeper channel.
‘It’s been years since I’ve had a surf. I’ve still got my seven-six in the garage. I’ll have to get the spiders off it though. You got any wax?’
She was scoffing down slices of toast, with marmalade spread generously all over them, and washing them down with gulps of sweet, black coffee.
‘Sure. How long are you gonna be?’ she asked.
‘Ahh … you go ahead and I’ll come after you. You don’t have to drive down. You can walk down to the beach from here. It’s a nice walk.’
Beaming a huge smile, she said, ‘Cool, I’ll see you out there and I’ll leave the wax out,’ and scampered out into her van to put on her wetsuit. He watched her walk down the driveway carrying her surfboard underarm. He thought that she looked so slender and sexy in her body-hugging wetsuit, like an agile cat.
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‘And her beautiful, long hair … this can’t be real, she can’t be real. What’s real? I’m not really going surfing, am I? Yeah! Better get into it. I hope I don’t make a fool of myself. I hope I still know how to surf.’
She had already paddled out by the time he walked down to the beach. It was early in the morning and the sun was still low above the horizon. The air was cool and the breeze was light offshore. The ocean was completely glassy with the sets rolling in every few minutes, two or three waves at a time. It was bigger than it looked from the kitchen, though, about five feet.
He placed his board on the sand and sat down to watch her. She was out alone. She sat right on the peak. A solid set came rolling in. She stretched on her board trying to see over the first wave. She let the first two waves go and took the third, biggest, one. She dropped in through the back of the peak, straight into a long, walling barrel. She snapped off a few turns while racing the peeling lip, finally finishing her ride with a stylish, arched-back pullout. Adam’s jaw went into stroke-like paralysis.
‘Jees, she can surf better than me.’
He watched her paddle back out, lean and fit, and hungry for the next wave. She paddled straight into the next set and caught one going left. Executing a perfect, forehand, pivot turn, she picked up the barrel, grinding its way down the shallow sand bank, and rode it deep inside all the way to the beach. She waited in the shallow water for a few moments, while three bigger set waves rolled through, then she ripped back out through the shorebreak like a paddling machine. Eventually he paddled out and sat up beside her.
‘You look like you surf every day,’ he said.
‘I usually surf twice a day,’ she replied.
She turned and paddled into another perfect peak and shrunk off into the distance, racing away, partially obscured from his view by the smoking curl. As she paddled back out, she saw him drop into a nice, clean five-footer and set himself up for an easy bottom turn, when he just fell into the wave, face first. He scrambled to his board and smiled at her, saying, slightly embarrassed,
‘I seem to be a bit rusty.’
She proceeded to gorge herself on a feast of waves, while he swam, paddled and got thoroughly thrashed by the whitewater. It was becoming clear that his problem wasn’t just his surfing hiatus. It was also the lingering after-effects of years of Nitrous Oxide abuse. He still couldn’t feel his feet, or his surfboard. He just couldn’t find his balance. In
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the end he swam to the beach, totally exhausted. She came cruising in about half an hour later, giving him a chance to recover. He commented on her surfing,
‘Wow, you absolutely rip out there, Libby.’
‘You should have seen me in eight-foot Granite. I got the place so wired. I was there for a whole month and it pumped every day. I had two weeks to prepare for the big days.
Big rides, long way, all the way to the beach.’
There wasn’t enough water in the whole Pacific Ocean that could put out the fire of the passion with which he enjoyed the vision of her perfect beauty. He couldn’t help but again become mesmerised by her fine torso, her strong, lean shoulders, her long, thin, muscular arms and legs, the way her wet hair hung over her face and how her smooth, wet lips glistened with their beaming smile.
‘I must apologise for my surfing.’
‘You ate a lot of lunch today. It feels like your balance is out.’
‘What?’
‘I mean, it might be your balance. Do you want to go back to your house?’
‘Have you had enough surfing?’
‘The Pope ain’t always a Catholic.’
‘I’m not so sure that that is the correct use of that phrase. You know, Libby, we could do something special for lunch in celebration of our friendship, that is, if you don’t have other plans.’
‘My life is a clean sheet, Adam. It is a self-revealing pathway.’
She grinned as she said that. Then she asked him to,
‘Define special.’
He looked her in the eyes and whispered,
‘Memorable, with a view and a great chef.’
‘With music?’
‘With music … and wine.’
‘Mmmm, Adam, my head is spinning already.’
So, there they were, walking up the narrow lane, side by side with boards underarm.
He was thirty-two, living a whole new life in Stanwell Park and she was nineteen, but she looked fifteen, in the dog business in California and on an insane surfing trip in Australia.
Who says that truth isn’t stranger than fiction?
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They never made it out to lunch. They had sandwiches sunning themselves on their beach towels on his front lawn. She wore her bikini, lying seductively on her back, while he sat up serving her food and drink admiring her flawless femininity.
‘Have you seen Sydney?’ he asked.
‘No, I haven’t. I try to avoid cities when I travel.’
‘You know, I grew up in that city. Would you like to see some nice places and maybe have dinner somewhere special, so we won’t forget?’
It was the middle of summer. She wore a tight pair of trendy, ankle-length jeans, with patches in them, and a brief, lacy, white top, tantalisingly concealing her small, bare breasts and enhancing her dark, suntanned complexion. Decorating her long, slender neck was a delicate seashell necklace. On her feet she wore an intricately-woven pair of leather sandals with the ties bowed around her fine ankles. Adam’s eyes literally popped out of their sockets when he saw her.
‘I don’t have too many clothes because I’m travelling.’
‘You are an absolute vision,’ he declared.
She spun on the spot, smiling, and replied,
‘You really think so?’
The old Charger, two-door coupe was still a good summer ride with its roof racks removed and pillarless windows wound all the way down. It still had its purposeful stance and they could hear the soft burble of the 265 Hemi under the mellow rhythms of J.J. Cale bopping out of the stereo speakers. They drove along Botany Bay and stopped for a coffee.
They sat together in the sun looking out at the tranquil bay. A little later, he showed her Bondi Beach and pointed out the building where he used to live. They had a gelato and a walk along the sand. How different she was from Nancy, yet how similar. Both women had completely entranced him. He drove her to the harbour where they walked the promenade from Lady Macquarie’s Chair, past the Botanic Gardens and the Opera House, to Circular Quay.
‘Thanks for showing me all this, Adam. Sydney is truly a beautiful city.’
He drove out to Rose Bay and parked behind the tennis courts. They walked to the water with their arms around each other and sat on a park bench and watched the seagulls flying amongst the moored boats in the bay.
‘This is my place of tranquillity in this city,’ he told her. ‘I used to come here when I felt stressed out. I’d buy a roast beef and salad roll and a bottle of ginger beer from the
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deli in Rose Bay and relax here feasting on my lunch. It was always a peaceful interlude in time, a brief contact with some kind of freedom mysteriously lurking out there, just beyond reach.’
They continued their drive through the wealthy harbour-side suburbs, all the way to the tip of South Head where they watched the yachts unfurl their colourful spinnakers as they sailed out to sea.
They arrived at Doyle’s Restaurant early and were given the best table for two, right out in front overlooking the narrow beach. Draped before them like a huge painting was Watson’s Bay with its moored yachts and the city skyline in the far distance. The sun was just setting behind the bridge, turning the harbour into liquid gold. She positively glowed in the afternoon light, a gentle breeze making her hair seem alive. He couldn’t take his eyes off her, as was the affliction of every other person in the restaurant. She placed her hand in his and admired his sunlit profile through her sunglasses. Surveying the glittering bay through his Polaroids, he commented,
‘Doyle’s is famous for its fish, you know.’
‘I love fish.’
‘Do you like wine?’
‘Do they have Chianti?’
When they finished their wild Barramundi, had their mousse and coffee and were fairly flying on the Chianti, she asked to be excused and left the table for a few minutes.
Later, when Adam asked for the check, the waiter informed him that the beautiful, young lady had already taken care of it.
‘Oh? Thank you.’ He turned towards her and whispered into her ear, ‘Are you nuts?
I can’t let you pay.’
‘It’s my way of saying thank you for your friendship.’
‘I’m sorry, but …’
She looked deeply into his eyes, smiled and said,
‘Adam, would you like to walk? And would you mind so much if I asked you to put your arm around me, if that’s, you know, OK with you?’
‘These are all unfair tactics,’ he protested.
‘What tactics? Is it a crime to want a walk and a hug?’
They walked along the curved promenade underneath the park lights, which had strings of multi-coloured Christmas lights suspended between them. They could hear the
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sound of the lapping waves along the sea wall and see the long, curved line of festive lights reflected off the water like off polished chrome.
As they strolled, arm in arm, he kept noticing her moist lips and imagining the sweetness of their taste. They stopped under one of the park lights. He couldn’t control himself anymore. He turned towards her, looked directly into her big, green pools, gently placed his hands around her thin waist and tenderly kissed her. That was their first kiss.
He remembered immersing himself completely in the delicacy of her mouth. She remembered spinning within his embrace, his lips tenderly making love to hers, with the stars, the moon, the city and all the lights whirling around them.
That night, after releasing some of their pent-up passion, they said good night to each other and hugged. He went to sleep in his room and she in her van. About one o’clock in the morning, he heard a quiet knock on his bedroom door. He whispered,
‘Yes?’
The door opened,
‘I couldn’t sleep. Can I sleep with you?’
‘Oh sure, here …’
In the soft moonlight, shining in through the window, he could see her remove her pyjama top over her head, revealing her fine torso. He then saw her slide her shorts down her legs and slip into bed with him, stark naked, squirming and backing into his embrace.
‘Hug me?’
2
The next couple of weeks were spent in the intoxicated mind-spin of each other’s company. They were never apart. They slept together, they ate together, they washed each other in the shower and they kissed each other incessantly. She watched him fly and drove his car down the hill at the end of the day, while he enjoyed watching her surf in the crisp, early, offshore mornings.
About half way through January, she walked into the bedroom one morning, carrying two cups of tea, and asked him,
‘What are your plans for the next few weeks?’
‘No big plans,’ he replied. ‘I know that I have to start looking for work in February.’
Her eyes beamed as she suggested,
‘Why don’t we do a trip north in my van? We can tie our boards on the roof and go surfin.’
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‘But I can’t surf and I’ve got to keep cutting the grass.’
‘Cut it when we get back and you can learn how to surf along the way, and sleeping in the van is real cosy.’
That was about all the persuasion it took for Adam to lock his house and hit the road with his childlike, longhaired, Californian, surfing girlfriend. They drove north to Crescent Head where she liked to camp on the point. They could watch the waves from her van there, and walk down for a surf.
‘Crescent’s a great scene for travelling surfers,’ she said.
She made breakfast and coffee for him and then enticed him to paddle out in the surf with her. He actually stood up and rode a few small ones while she ripped up the bigger stuff out the back. Later that night, snuggled together in the van, she lovingly encouraged him.
‘You see how much you have improved. You surfed so much better today than your first time.’
‘I know, and I’m starting to feel my feet again when I walk barefoot.’
‘Surfing may accelerate your recovery, and isn’t it fun? And we’re together.’
He kissed the back of her neck and whispered in her ear,
‘Did you know that you are the fruit off the vine, ripened in the sun like a juicy peach?’
‘Don’t peaches grow on trees?’
‘The moment, the moment …’
‘Sorry.’
‘Where was I?’
‘You were telling me how you thought I was a grape.’
‘You are more than just a grape, my darling, you are the very essence of that grape, you are Chianti.’
‘Really? Chianti? The wine of love?’
‘And a ripe, juicy, succulent peach.’
‘Mmm, careful, you could get it all over your face … goodness … ohhhh …’
They didn’t stay anywhere for very long as she kept moving at a steady pace. She had been buying the newspapers and checking out the weather maps, and she’d been glued to the radio during the weather reports.
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‘They’re predicting a swell to hit southeast Queensland in three days. We really ought to be in Noosa for that. We have to keep driving.’
He sat in the passenger seat, watching her drive, and thought to himself,
‘I am but a leaf in your stream my young and lively brook. I want to feel the joy of all your waterfalls and pools.’
She smiled to herself and let out a barely audible, ‘Oooooh.’ Then she blurted out,
‘We could drop into that natural water-slide place. We’ve got time for something like that.’
‘You mean Currumbin Creek? The slide where you earn your right to live on a higher plane?’
‘Yeah, the place you talked about the other night. Can we go there?’
‘Did I talk about the slide? I can’t remember …’
‘Maybe I heard about it from a travelling surfer.’
‘We could be there in a few hours,’ he suggested, ‘if we give Byron Bay a miss.’
‘Is there somewhere to camp?’
‘I’m sure that there are some nice spots along the road on the way into the valley.’
They ended up spending the night camped in a clearing by the creek. There was a burnt-out campfire there and some wood, so they lit themselves a fire and fried up some bacon and eggs from the small fridge. They also had some sliced bread that they toasted over the flames and a couple of ripe, juicy tomatoes. They washed it all down with a cold beer, after which she brought out her gold container and little white pipe, saying,
‘It feels like a special occasion.’
‘You know, Lib, that stuff of yours makes me feel like every cell in my body has gone into hyper-life.’
‘Yeah, and I’ve got some stuff that makes you feel like a fish.’
‘Like a fish?’
‘Yeah. No arms, no legs and no brain.’
He laughed,
‘You crack me up. Should I try some of your fish stuff?’
‘I wouldn’t advise it. You have to be completely alone and not expecting any company. You get pretty non-comprende for a while. The ancient practice goes right back to the old Anasazi Indians who used to do it as part of their rain ritual. Legend has it that they could make it rain.’
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She went to sleep curled up in the warmth of his secure embrace. They left the van door open, facing the fire and the creek. In the middle of the night they were startled out of their sleep by the sound of a car driving up, its lights lighting up the darkness.
‘’Don’t move,’ she whispered.
They heard the engine stop and the car doors open. They then heard footsteps coming through the grass towards them. He tried to move, but she stopped him. They heard two male voices speaking just outside the van.
‘It’s judgement day, fuckers!’
‘Fuckin bullshit tourist shit … owwww!’
‘Owww, fuck, owwww!’
‘Owww, me fuckin head, fuck, owwww.’
‘Stop, me fuckin head’s killin me, owww, fuck.’
‘Me too, fuckin go back, Jesus, owwww.’
They heard the two voices, whining and cursing, recede back to the car, the car doors slam shut, the motor fire up and the car race away in a long, sliding wheelspin. The camp suddenly reverted back to dark, tranquil serenity. After a few anxious moments, he whispered into her ear,
‘That was like a bizarre dream.’
‘You’re not hugging me tight enough,’ she replied.
As he drew her closer to himself, she curled up again and, while looking at the glowing embers of the fire outside, promised herself,
‘Nothing will ever hurt you, my darling Earthman. My heart does truly beat for you tonight.’
She then whispered to him,
‘What are you doing to my ear? … Ohhhhh … the ecstasy of your touch … I am always so wet when I am near you …’
3
Mid-morning, next day, at the slide.
‘God, there’s twice as much water going over the top as the last time I was here.
There’s like a foot of water going over the top. It’s a raging torrent.’
‘I feel the fear, Adam. It’s a bona fide place, man.’
‘Fear?’
‘So, you go from up here and land down there, in that little pool?’
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‘Yeah, with a lot of faith.’
She undressed down to her bikini while he removed his backpack, T-shirt and sandals, remaining only dressed in his faded-blue boardshorts. They both surveyed the slide for some time, marvelling at how all the water going down it formed a perfect barrel as it flowed around the right-hand bend. Finally, he had a go from half way. He could barely hold himself in the strong current. He let go, flew down the chute and splashed down in the pool, twenty feet below. He beamed a wide smile at her from under literally hundreds of gallons of water as she cheerfully applauded. He had barely gotten out of the way when she splashed down next to him. She threw her arms around him and pulled him back into the torrent where she wanted to be kissed by him.
After a few slides from the lower take off, he was ready to go from the top. He sat there for a while, watching the rushing water. She sat lower, on a wide, sloping rock. Her long, flowing hair glistened in the sun as her eyes panned around the lushly-vegetated gorge. She began to see native faces appear in the stones and tree trunks. She noticed how one large boulder sculpted itself into a young, black man and she saw a small palm change into a young, black girl holding a piece of bark full of fish. All the rocks around her began to sculpt themselves into young, aboriginal children’s faces, all smiling at her. She saw an old woman in the creek who was washing her long white hair which cascaded down the rockslide all the way into the pool. Beneath the sound of the rushing waters she could hear singing and hitting together of sticks. She sensed that this was a happy place, a place one visited in one’s youth. She looked up at Adam, who was sitting on a rock in deep contemplation, and asked,
‘How does it look?’
‘Oh, you know, a bit intimidating.’
She watched in amazement as he eased himself into the powerful current. Her eyes followed him as he plummeted, uncontrollably, down the slide and got flipped by the lip to fly through the air for twenty feet and land upside down right in the middle of the tiny pool. He burst through the surface of the water with the most joyous look on his face. He looked at her, smiling and applauding him, then he looked at the treetop canopy, sparkling with its rays of light breaking through the leaves, and exclaimed,
‘What a rush!’
‘That looked outasight, man!’
After a while, when he calmed down, he began to philosophise.
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‘This place always feels like an initiation. You’ve always got to make the choice, but the years will make sure that one day we will all have to knock it back.’
She looked at him, then at everything alive around them, and replied,
‘There will always be others, but the choice confronts me now.’
Sliding from the top of the slide was most daunting the first time one did it and being telepathic didn’t make it any easier. She looked concerned.
‘You have been here before, Adam. You’ve done it before. This is my first time.’
‘Try to relax and go with the water.’
‘Oh yeah, go with the water. I saw you go with the water, head first!’
‘You can’t control it. It’s a ride of faith.’
She focussed on the rushing water and crabbed herself into the current. She took off with a loud scream and squealed all the way down. She splashed into the pool much neater than Adam, actually appearing to be in control around the bend of tunnelling water, off the lip and through the aerial part of the drop. Exhilarated, she looked up through the cascading waterfall at the rays of light sneaking through the thick canopy above her. She had finally done what her brother had been excitedly talking about for all those years. She looked around at the hundreds of smiling faces, and she looked at Adam’s smiling face, and realised that she was now one of them as well.
They had three slides each before Liberty said that she felt pretty lucky and that she wasn’t going to push her luck any more. Adam had one more go. He felt free and fearless on that last slide, ending it with a satisfying inner contentment, knowing that he was still up to the mark. Then he said,
‘You know, Lib, there are some nice pools just upstream of here.’
They picked up their things and negotiated the round boulders and stones as they made their way upstream along the banks of the swollen creek. They arrived at the first pool where they had a swim, to get wet and cool down. The day was turning into a typically-hot, January, Queensland-sauna kind of day. It did one no good to be anywhere very far from water.
As they negotiated their way further upstream, she commented,
‘It’s like an emerald tunnel in here.’
The emerald tunnel opened up into an emerald dome.
‘This is the pool, Libby. Look at the water, it’s almost iridescent green, like opal, like your eyes.’
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She walked up close behind him, put her arms around his waist, placed her chin on his shoulder and whispered,
‘It’s just beautiful. I’m going swimming.’
As he stood there, admiring the pool, she neatly placed her things down and unbuttoned her bikini top.
‘Wow, darling, what if someone shows up?’
She slipped off her bikini panties and, wading into the pool, said,
‘There’s not another person within a mile of us.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘I have a highly developed sense for people’s presence.’
‘Maybe it’s not as highly developed as you think.’
‘Adam, this is a sacred pool. You may only ever swim in a sacred pool completely naked.’
The vision he had of her right then, playing in the shallows, brown skin, long sun-bleached hair, slender muscular body, imprinted itself deep into his memory.
He undressed as she swam to the middle of the pool and waited for him there. He waded into the water and swam into her open embrace. She kissed his mouth and straddled his hips.
‘I love you, Adam, ohhhhh, especially when you do that to me.’
They made passionate love in the cool, emerald waters of the pool, completely lost in each other’s embrace.
A little later, still naked, they lay down side by side on a flat rock and sunned themselves in a ray of light breaking through a small gap in the rainforest canopy. Looking up at the trees, lying on her back and holding his hand in hers, she felt the arrival of a new innocence. She lay there, for a few moments, trying to comprehend the meaning of this new presence within her. She squeezed Adam’s hand and he squeezed hers in return. She did not move as she gradually realized the true meaning of her inner feeling. The wisp of a presence within her was a new person.
She knew that telepathic women could feel the moment of conception. They witnessed the arrival of the spirit of their future child. As they grew its body in their womb, they spoke to it telepathically, in pictures, words and feelings. They spoke to their children right through their pregnancy. By the time a telepathic child was born, it had already been taught rudimentary telepathic communication. On the day of its birth, the
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child received a teacher who began to guide the suckling in its first steps on the road to self-discipline and advanced concentration.
She spoke, in thought, to the little shining light in her belly.
‘Hello little boy, where did you come from?’
Adam lay next to her in blissful exhaustion.
‘Ah, sorry there, darling, I think I got a bit carried away.’
She responded with,
‘Did I ever tell you how much I love the feeling of your skin on mine?’
‘No.’
She closed her eyes and rested with her right hand in his and her left caressing the new life within her.
4
They arrived in Noosa that night and slept in the van in the car park at National Park. In the morning, Libby was up early, with the tailgate down, making cups of coffee for a couple of young travelling surfers from Finland. Adam looked over his pillow at the tall, suntanned, blond boys and listened to them describing the previous day at Teatree in broad Nordic accents. He then turned and looked out the windscreen and saw three perfect barrels peeling along the point of National Park. She scrambled some eggs and made more coffee on her little camp cooker and served it to him. After breakfast, they took the long path into the park, walking side by side carrying their boards under their arms, headed for Teatree Bay.
The following week was spent blissing-out in the waist-high, tubular perfection of Teatree. The days were sweltering in the mid-thirties and the water was a clear, warm twenty-six. They spent all their days in the sheltering bays of Noosa, surfing, swimming and lying around in the shade of the Pandanus palms.
Adam’s feel for his board quickly returned in the learner-friendly waves of inside Teatree. He had some long rides and was beginning to turn his board quite well. He sensed that it was soon going to feel like the old days. Liberty spent most of her time out the back, taking off deep inside, close to the rocks, and stealing plenty of grinding barrels off the locals.
In the evenings, they parked with the group of travelling surfers up in the corner of the now-empty car park. There was a small lawn there, with picnic tables and a barbecue.
They sat around in a circle on their fold-up canvas chairs, the backs of all their vans open
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with music playing. Their faces were all lit up expressing their joy of being on a surfing odyssey. For some of them, Noosa was the last stop on a trip up the coast, for others, Noosa was the other side of the world, as far away from home as they could go, and for one of them, Noosa was another galaxy. But they all had one thing in common. Noosa was the place where their pilgrimage ended.
Before going to sleep, Adam and Liberty took a stroll to the water’s edge. In the reflected moonlight, they watched line after line of perfect, empty waves peeling off for hundreds of yards down the point of National Park. She hugged him with both arms and expressed her feeling.
‘They are like the waves of love I feel for you, Adam.’
‘I fell in love with you the first moment I saw you, in your wetsuit, down in the park.
I noticed your long hair and you looked so sexy. What is going to happen to us, Lib?’
‘Don’t think about it now, lovely man. We’re on a surf trip and we can pretend that this is forever. Right now? Right now, I feel like I need to be with you constantly.’
‘I feel the same way, Lib. I don’t want to be away from you … ever.’
5
They surfed Noosa for a few more days until the swell finally died. On their return journey south, they dropped into Broken Head and decided to stay there for a while.
Liberty knew that the low tides were going to be early in the mornings for the next few days and that there was a southerly wind blowing. She knew that early in the mornings it could be southwest and offshore.
Adam was amazed at the change in the place. His twelve-year-old memory of an open meadow, with tents and caravans scattered around, was shattered by the new image. The dirt road was paved now and the caravan park was all set out in regimented sites. There was a new fence and slatted, walking paths to the beach instead of natural foot tracks. And instead of parking in a clearing, there were now proper car-parking spaces.
They couldn’t camp right on his old spot because of the way they had the campsites set out now. There was actually no camping there at all anymore. It was a picnic area now.
He noticed, though, that his tree was still there, along with the old picnic table, which was showing its age a bit.
She woke him early next morning. Still half asleep he mumbled,
‘What, darling, now?’
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‘Not what you think, sweetheart. The surf is,’ she leaned over and whispered into his ear, ‘insane.’
He opened his eyes as she lovingly kissed his lips.
‘It’s still pitch-black outside.’
‘It’ll be light in half an hour. Come, let’s taste some perfection and see if we can beat the crowd.’
In the dawn light, the thin, hollow barrels of Broken Head looked like something made in heaven. As they paddled out together, just off the break, they noticed how each wave broke like the one before, like they were coming out of a machine.
‘There’s no one out here,’ he said.
‘You take the first wave today, sweetie.’
A beautiful, four-foot swell came rolling in around the point, peaking up right in front of him.
‘You are too kind, my darling.’
He turned his board around and with only two light paddles angled into a rapidly-racing, vertical wall of water. His surfboard took off like a rocket with him desperately trying to keep up with it. The wave peeled off like a machine. He steadied himself, went into a relaxed crouch and basically didn’t come out of the barrel for the next fifty yards.
He pulled out of the wave with a nicely-carved turn, dropped onto his board and gave a little, ‘Wahoo!’ There was some zest in his paddling now. On the way back out he watched her compress herself into a small ball and bury herself deep in a grinding barrel. He thought to himself,
‘She surfs with such natural balance, such poise and style, so artistic, like she’s been doing it all her life.’
She pulled out next to him and paddled out with him.
‘Well, how’s my honey then? Who got barrelled on their first wave, eh?’
‘It’s starting to come back to me, but you, you absolutely rip out here, darling. Did you ever win any competitions?’
‘No, sweetheart, never. For me, competitions kill the spirit of surfing. Dora knew that. Surfing is an art and a communication with nature, and everything that supports nature. It’s about one person and one place, and it’s about the waves, waves of pure, perfect energy.’
‘So, you don’t like crowds.’
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‘You got that right. Surfing alone is the ultimate, but I love surfing with you. You light up my surfs, darling. Can I take this one?’
‘Be my guest.’
Adam watched her turn her head and focus on the approaching wall of water. She paddled into position and took one stroke to drop into a steep, five-foot wall. Adam could see her through the back of the thin wave as she sped by all lit up by the morning sun. It was like looking at her through a hand-made piece of French, emerald-coloured, stained glass.
6
A few days later, as they drove through the banana plantations around Coff’s Harbour, sipping on a couple of Big Banana thick shakes, she turned to him and asked,
‘Do you like children?’
He thought for a moment, then replied,
‘Actually, I love children.’ He thought some more, then added, ‘And I’ll tell you something else, I’d have one with you at the drop of a hat. The kid would be out of this world. I’m ready to go, baby, want me to pull over?’
She laughed at him,
‘Any excuse.’
‘Who needs excuses?’
‘Yeah.’
He slowed the van down and, checking the rear vision mirror, pulled over in a small clearing and switched off the motor. He turned towards her, took her hand, looked her in the eyes and said,
‘Listen, darling, it’s not such a ridiculous idea.’
She smiled and said,
‘You ol romantic. We’ve only just met, but I feel good about us.’
She looked into his eyes and he could see tears welling up within hers as she whispered,
‘Do you like families?’
He took her into his arms and hugged her tightly and replied,
‘I love you. All I want is to be with you and to look after you, and who wouldn’t want to have a kid with you? … Don’t cry, darling. If you look at everything objectively, we’re actually laughing.’
256
It took her another month to tell him that she was pregnant. After a seemingly endless pause, lying in their bed, he looked at her across the pillow and quipped,
‘Boy, Liberty, you’re so bloody fertile that a bloke as much as looks at you sideways and you get pregnant.’
Then he eased himself up close to her and kissed and hugged her. She began to cry again. He consoled her and held her, then asked softly,
‘Are you sure? How sure are you?’
In between sniffles, she replied,
‘How Catholic is the Pope?’
He sat up and looked at her tummy,
‘Do you think he’d like being called Ben?’
‘Sweetie,’ she blew her nose into a tissue, ‘I think he’d love it.’
‘He might be a she.’
‘It feels like he’s a he.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Mothers just know these things.’
Adam lay there for a while, thinking about the new development in his life. He finally went to sleep completely embraced in her arms, both of them bathed in the silvery light of the full moon streaming in through their bedroom window.
…….
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