Swell (16 page)

‘How’s about it then, girl?’ he growled. ‘You, me and some hot lovin’?’

Did he really just say ‘hot lovin’?

I laughed. Ricky’s arm flew up to catch his Stetson that toppled from his head.

‘What? What are you laughing at?’

He looked genuinely surprised.

‘I’m sorry, Ricky, I’m flattered but come on, “hot lovin’”?’

He visibly squirmed.

‘It was all I could think of at the time.’

I turned and winked.

‘It needs a bit of work, Ricky. You don’t have to play this game with me. I’m here to understand you all and I’m guessing that is not who you really are.’

Ricky’s eyes met mine. He was wrong-footed. He blushed before he started to laugh. He really had fantastic bone structure and the most peculiar eyes, like lumps of granite with silver specks.

‘I’ve got an image to keep up. Oh well, it was worth a try.’

‘I suppose and perhaps if you weren’t Jason’s father, you never know,’ I teased. ‘I mean you do have something of the Clint Eastwood about you.’

Ricky gripped his chest like a wounded soldier.

‘Clint Eastwood? But that dude is so old.’

‘I didn’t say you looked the same age.’

Ricky shook his head.

‘Man, you English girls really say it how it is.’

‘We tend to, yes.’

‘OK, that works for me. Jason could do with a girl like you around. You’re different, you’re interesting. I like that.’

A thought struck me that I had heard the line before. I must have looked quizzical because Ricky stepped back and raised his palms.

‘What? What now? Don’t go telling me I remind you of John Wayne.’

‘No,’ I laughed, ‘not John Wayne but you do remind me of someone. It’s strange but I feel as if I’ve met you before.’

Ricky shook his head.

‘Nope, I would definitely have remembered you.’ He led the way back towards the main room. ‘Especially with comments like that.’

‘Yes I am rather unforgettable.’

We rounded the corner and came face to face with Jason who looked from his father to me and back again with a bemused expression.

‘Everything alright?’ he asked, slowly handing me one of the beers in his hand into which he had slipped a sliver of lime.

‘Everything’s great, thank you,’ I said.

‘Yeah, son, everything’s good.’

Ricky nodded and patted his son on the shoulder before clomping away in his heavy, masculine boots.

‘Clint Eastwood,’ I heard him mutter, ‘holy shit, kill me now.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

During my time spent on the surfing scene I had learned it was hard to motivate a professional surfer to do anything other than surf, check the surf, travel across the world to surf, write a song about surfing, plan the next surf and occasionally play golf when the surf was not up to scratch. Admittedly if I were paid a million pounds to live on the beach and ride waves for a living I probably would not have been very motivated to entertain the monotonies of life either. However, once immersed in ranch life, Jason showed a real commitment to our book. Away from the hype of the surf world, it was as if he could finally concentrate on the non-aqueous thoughts sheltering in drier corners of his brain.

I enjoyed my most restful sleeps for months in a king size cast iron bed under a handmade quilt that had me dreaming I was Laura Ingalls in
Little House On The Prairie
. We rose early every morning and after one of Ricky’s hearty breakfasts of homemade pancakes, eggs, bacon, fresh fruit and copious amounts of strong coffee, Jason and I helped to feed the cattle and horses before taking a drive around the perimeter of the ranch to check all was well on the acres of land.

The climate was hot and dry in Ventura County, turning the fields into a seared carpet of yellow grass. Purple rocky mountains and proud old trees broke up the landscape. A flat field of soil in one sunny corner was a pumpkin patch where, Jesus informed me, the huge orange vegetables grew on the surface in October and November, appearing as if they had been dropped from the sky.

Ranch life was not the place for dainty sandals and designer wedges, which gave me the perfect excuse to go shopping at the cowboy outfitter store in downtown Ventura.
Jason introduced me to Jesse and Earl, two ripe old cowboys with paunchy bellies and well-fed cheeks, who had taken the store over from their father and grandfather. Jesse and Earl had known Jason since he was a child who had tried to sell them pumpkins he had pilfered from the ranch. They were fiercely proud of their local champion although they hid the reverence behind their wit.

‘Jason have we got some boots for you, boy. These beauties are only five thousand a piece. You probably got that in small change, ain’t ya?’

‘Betcha he has, Earl, but them white leather boots ain’t the done thing to be wearing on the beach now. He’d attract all the wrong sorts in high heeled boots and that rubber suit he wears.’

Jason laughed off their comments.

‘I don’t need boots, guys, but we need to turn Bailey here into a cowgirl. Show her what you got.’

I was somehow coaxed into Wrangler jeans I would not have been seen dead in back home and a Mexican leather belt with a spectacularly bejewelled buckle. Jason selected a tan beaver Stetson, which he pressed onto my head. I brushed my hair back over my shoulders and tapped the shaped brim of the hat.

‘How do I look?’

‘Pretty as a picture,’ Earl whistled.

‘Makes me wish I was ten years younger,’ Jesse sighed.

‘So you’d be young enough to be her grandpa you mean,’ Earl goaded him.

I flicked up the collar of the grey and white gingham shirt I had selected from the racks and smiled. The hat, I had to admit, gave me an air of confidence that only a Stetson can.

‘Boots. I need boots,’ I said.

‘Step this way, Ma’am.’

The cowboy boots were masterpieces of leather workmanship, each one designed for a purpose.

‘These here are your work boots,’ Earl explained, ‘these are for rodeo, the pink ones are your dancing boots and the glitzy ones there with the sparkles on are for very special occasions.’ He tapped his nose and flicked his head towards Jason. ‘Like a wedding.’

I smiled, largely at the thought of wearing cowboy boots under a wedding dress.

‘Well I won’t be needing those,’ I said with a wink, ‘so I’ll go ahead and try the work boots.’

I selected a pair of soft leather boots the colour of ginger biscuits with exquisitely contoured heels created from layers of contrasting wood. Despite the length to the knee and the pointed toes, the boots were incredibly comfortable.

‘Gosh I can’t believe they don’t hurt my feet. Boots this lovely should definitely require a certain amount of pain for the pleasure of owning them.’

‘They’re made for working,’ Earl laughed, ‘and cowboys work hard.’

I ran my hand over the embroidered leather. Jimmy Choo was a nobody in this town. These boots were exquisite.

I clip-clopped over to the cash register where Jesse’s mottled hands were ringing up our purchases.

‘Looky here, she even walks like a real cowgirl now.’

Jason, Jesse and Earl looked me up and down and exchanged approving glances.

‘It’s amazing,’ I said, swaying my hips, ‘they come with an inbuilt strut.’

‘Very sexy, huh, boy?’

Earl winked at Jason who flushed red and pressed his own selected Stetson onto his head to hide his face.

‘Cat got his tongue,’ Earl said to Jesse.

‘Our boots have that effect,’ Jesse replied with a chuckle.

Each day when our ranch chores were complete, Jason and I took a drive in the RCR buggy that was like a golf cart without the roof. While Jason drove and at least one of the dogs bounced merrily around on the seat between us, I interviewed Jason about his childhood, his influences and his path to success. It was the perfect setting to delve uninterrupted into Jason’s past while taking a well-deserved break from his surfing present. We talked about everything from his first surf to the day his brother went to jail. It was like speed dating in detail. We covered high moments and low moments and with each passing day, Jason trusted me enough to let me inch closer and closer to his true story. I had never felt so passionate about a book before and slowly began to realise that perhaps locking myself away and trying to dredge commercial fiction written to the same old formula up from the depths of my imagination was not where my true talent lay.

I was a good listener; a skill I had practised since my father’s suicide with the intention of never letting someone close to me suffer in silence again.

The one subject that was still touchy was Harrison. Jason had not told his father he was very likely a grandfather and he was finding it hard to decide what to do. I offered my opinion once and only once.

‘With all due respect, Jason, Harrison is a child. He tracked you down but it’s not his responsibility to come and find you again. It’s your responsibility to face up to the fact you created a son whether you intended to or not. All you can do now is try to do the best you can by him.’

Jason nodded and said, ‘Thank you for your opinion.’ I did not broach the subject again.

I soon learned Jason had been younger than Harrison when he first started surfing. Ricky had presented him and Mike with a battered surfboard that was the very board on which he had won the Californian Championships in 1966. The board was still stored in the rafters of the barn, out of place among the horse tack and gun cabinets. The foam beneath the fibreglass had yellowed over time and the deck had suffered war wounds, leaving it cracked and dented. Beneath the wax that had melted and re-congealed in dirty globules, I could make out a red lightning bolt running down the centre.

‘This was the board in the photograph of you as a child in the Poseidon head office. Your first contest victory.’

‘Well spotted,’ said Jason running his hands over the rails. ‘Not much gets past you, Bailey.’

I beamed proudly. I was not the clueless surfing virgin I had been at the start of this project.

‘The first time I surfed this board, I helped my dad clean the wax off in the sun and then we waxed it up again,’ Jason remembered wistfully, ‘then we drove over the hills on a rusty old tractor to get to the ocean. Mike was with us but he was really young and he didn’t want to do the wax job so Dad let me go first as a reward. He made two marks in the wax where I had to put my feet and before he put the board in the water he held both my arms, looked me straight in the eyes and said – “Son, this is a champion’s board so you treat it with respect and surf like a champion”. I stood up on my first ever wave and rode it all the way to the beach. I guess I’ve been doing what he ordered me to do ever since.’

‘I had a similar thing with my first pen,’ I smirked. ‘I held it up the right way, scribbled something and that was that. I’ve been scribbling ever since. It wasn’t really a champion’s pen, though, it was a red plastic one my dad stole from the betting shop.’

Jason laughed and climbed up to return the board to its resting place.

‘So did Mike like surfing too?’

‘Yeah, he had talent, but he was not as motivated as I was. He seemed to have this hidden anger deep inside him that had always been there. Mom could repress it but after she died it slowly bubbled to the surface. He always had a chip on his shoulder about something. I think he wanted to prove that we weren’t just nobodies because we lived in a caravan. The thing was, we only had the one board so we had to fight for it and as I was so keen to surf I always won and I got to surf more. While I focused on surfing better and better, Mike concentrated on trying to fight better. That’s what landed him in jail I guess.’

I made an O with my lips when I saw the nerve twitching in Jason’s cheek.

‘It’s not your fault you know,’ I said softly.

‘It is.’ He sat down on a hay bale and rested his elbows on his knees. ‘He was fighting over me. We were in Florida a couple of years back and one of the Tiger Sharks was bad mouthing me. It got pretty bad and they made threats that they were going to hurt me. Mike took it upon himself to sort it out. He hit the guy and then it was as if something snapped. He just kept going. The guy’s head was like a mashed potato.’

My O grew larger.

‘He didn’t…?’

‘No, he didn’t kill the guy but still it ruined both their lives. It was my fault; I should’ve seen it coming. I should have let him surf more, mellowed him out a bit.’

‘So that’s why you dislike Cain and the Tiger Sharks so much.’

Jason sniffed.

‘That and more, yeah.’

We wandered out of the barn and I gently rubbed my hand across his back. The sun was sinking into the ocean behind the hills and the sky was ablaze with the vibrant pink light of a dying day.

We walked to the banks of the ranch’s only lake that glistened in the baked earth like a pool of pink champagne. We sat beside each other and stared mesmerised at the surface of the glassy water that was broken occasionally by insects and fish. The only sounds other than the intermittent neigh of a horse and the high-pitched cries of the coyotes known to circle the perimeter of the land was the chorus of frogs hiding in the rushes around our feet.

I breathed in the freshest air I had ever filled my lungs with, leaned back on my hands and closed my eyes.

‘You know I used to dream about locking myself away and writing a book in a secluded retreat like this but I always thought it would remain a fantasy.’

‘Fantasies can become reality if you try hard enough,’ said Jason. He added with a laugh – ‘You writers, you have those little dreams in your head all the time, don’t you? Do you ever really live in reality full time?’

‘Well the dreams are usually better than the reality. Until now.’

I turned to look at him. I felt so overwhelmingly content I feared it was all too good to be true.

I glanced at his handsome face in the dusky light. At the face that had sold millions of pounds worth of surf products and had, speaking of fantasies, filled those of pubescent American schoolgirls and post-pubescent groupies for years.

‘Until now,’ Jason repeated, ‘you took the words right out of my mouth.’