‘I’m Maudie and this is my husband Jago.’
‘Hi there.’ She smiled at the diminutive man who bobbed his head in greeting in return.
‘I’m Jago!’
‘Yes, hi.’ It felt rude to say that Maudie had already given this information.
‘He’s as deaf as arseholes!’ Maudie pointed at him.
‘Oh!’ She didn’t know if it was rude to laugh at Jago’s expense or rude not to laugh at Maudie’s humour.
‘How are you feeling? Excited?’ The twinkle in Jago’s eyes suggested he might be speaking for himself and had clearly not heard Maudie, more than proving her point.
‘Nervously cautious, I guess, and excited, yes.’ She over-enunciated. Loudly.
‘Good.’ He nodded and exchanged a look with Maudie, suggesting Tawrie had inadvertently passed a test.
She was actually a tad more than nervously cautious. She was afraid. Not that she was about to share this with the primary members of the Peacocks. It was ridiculous really, considering she had always lived in Ilfracombe, woken each morning of her life and looked out over the sea. Some, she knew, opened their eyes to stare at a wall or a building, a park or a forest, a busy road or a lane, a shop, a hill or mountain, but it was the big, big sea that was her next-door neighbour. Her constant companion.
Sometimes in the café, she’d hear those that didn’t know the ocean talking about it as if it were nothing more than salty water where their cod lived before it got slapped into a box with chips and smothered in salt and vinegar. Tawrie knew it was so much more than that. She had long held it in fascination, the shifting landscape a moving picture. She captured it each morning in her mind:sometimes brown, often green, occasionally blue with white crests and foaming arcs, or flat ripples and wide waves; floating weed and brown sticks, softened glass and stripped wood, and the redundant shells it spat on to the shore. It was a changing thing that called to her in soft murmurs as it kissed the wet sand. She heard it roar in fierce winds, dousing her in winter and calming her in summer. It was a barometer of life. As well as being a powerful force that could just as easily take life. This much she knew.
She had, contrary to her mother’s observation, always paddled, idled in its embrace. The earliest photograph of her was taken right there on Hele Bay Beach, sporting a fat nappy, hanging low on those barrel-hefting legs, a smiling face and a handful of sand held up to the camera. She wondered now who had taken it. Her dad possibly? She liked to think so. Liked to think that he carried the image of her looking up at him in her happy place, right there on the sand.
‘Right then, dear, you get yourself changed and we’ll meet you on the shoreline. And don’t be nervous, this is a magical day! It’ll change your life!’ Maudie spoke with authority and Tawrie felt the stab of hope that it might just be true.
‘Okay.’ She let her duffel bag drop at her feet. ‘What time will everyone else arrive? Do we have to wait for them or do you just turn up and plop in one by one? Like those penguins who tramp for days looking for food and then jump the moment they get to the water’s edge.’
Maudie stared at her, looked towards Jago, then back again. ‘What do you mean everyone else?’
Tawrie’s heart sank and her stomach dropped to her feet as she realised that Maudie and Jagowerethe Peacock Swimmers. All thoughts of making new friends and enriching her pretty non-existent social life carried away into the sea spray.
‘Oh, I just thought that ...’ She paused, wary of causing offence. ‘I figured that maybe ...’
‘Come on! Time and tide and all that!’ Jago clapped, seemingly keen to hurry her along, like she was a dog that needed geeing up a bit.
As she struggled into her wetsuit, she watched Maudie and Jago plod along side by side, exactly like two little penguins returning to the water. Her gut stirred with doubt, questioning why she was getting involved at all. But also with something that felt a lot like envy at the sight of the couple, living their best peacock life.
Hesitantly, she kicked off her trainers and peeled off her thick socks. The cold hit her feet and she shivered, feeling every bit of her skin goosebump as her muscles bunched and her jaw tensed. Next, she stepped out of her tracksuit bottoms and shrugged her arms free from her hoodie, revealing her racing-back swimming costume, which she’d had the wisdom to put on in the comfort of her bedroom. With her wetsuit now clinging to her skin, goggles in place over her swimming cap, she trod with caution to the water’s edge, feeling the bite of sharp stones on the tender soles of her feet. The second the white foam tickled her toes, she jumped back.
‘Shit!’
The cold was on another level. It wasn’t the best start. She was, however, thankful that no one other than Maudie and Jago were around to witness her rather embarrassing debut.
‘Don’t overthink it, dear! Just wade on in!’ Maudie called from the water where she and Jago bobbed, shoulders submerged, like two bright-eyed seals. They made it look so easy.
She knew she could simply turn and run back up the beach and shove on her fleece-lined dry robe; no one would ever know. Apart from maybe in the weeks to come when her nan encountered Maudie in the doctors’ waiting room. She could even say she’d doneit! Make out she’d dived in, given it a go. Trouble was, Tawrie Gunn was many things but she was not and never had been a liar.
But it all seemed like too much too soon. Swimming felt risky – too risky – and her heart thundered with fearful anticipation as she wondered what it might have felt like for her dad. Had he been cold, afraid ... and all alone? Did he know he was about to take his last breath or was he dead before the sea claimed him? She shook her head to clear her mind, deciding there was no reason she couldn’t step in and let the salt water lap over her shoulders, count to three and run out again.
‘That’s it, Tawrie! You’re already up to your knees, that’s a quarter peacock!’
This crazy commentary was enough to make her laugh hard, and that alone was something that had been missing of late, as the years marched on and the fear of life passing her by had intensified. With her numb feet pushing onwards and her spirits lifted by her laughter, she realised that this was exactly what she had wished for, even if it wasn’t quite the club she had envisaged.
‘Your waist, Tawrie! It’s up to your waist! Once you’ve got your bits and pieces in that’s the worst of it over!’ Jago called, and she laughed even harder. It might be bloody freezing, but she was, by her reckoning, now at least half peacock. And that was a start.
CHAPTER TWO
HARRIETSTRATTON
