West to the Sea

It was the sea that would test me that day: the wild Tasman Sea that had swallowed better men than me, and would have taken me too, had reason not replaced fear.

We were new chums in a foreign country: a place that seemed to exist on the underside of everything we knew. The seasons were the wrong-way round. The sun and stars turned in reverse, and even the air itself had a strange quality to it: thick with salt and heat and the scent of far-off rain. It was a young land, they said, carved and sung into being by ocean-roving Polynesians long before the pale settlers came, those who built their shame into the very bones of the place and passed it on, muted and enduring, to their descendants. The people looked at us with a sort of tired mistrust, as if they had seen too many of our kind before.

It was mid-January, hot and sticky, the sky sullen with clouds that threatened and refused. The air pressed down upon the city, heavy as a fever dream. Restless in our small rooms, we thought to chase some imagined coolness at the sea. So we bundled our two young sons and our smaller, younger daughter into the old car, with the faithful Labrador, who never cared for travel, trembling already at the sound of the engine.

The poor beast, unable to master its own stomach, brought up its breakfast onto our daughter’s lap within the first kilometre. Her scream split the heavy air like a cracked bell. She thrust its wet head out the window, its tongue lolling and eyes wild, while the wind streamed its misery behind us. In the cramped back seat, the children wriggled and shouted, each claiming a piece of air or legroom, as the dog panted between them like a dying pilgrim.

We were heading west, toward the black-sand beach they said was beautiful, but unpatrolled by lifeguards. The day had begun badly, but yet there was a strange exhilaration in it too, as if some necessary trial were being played out before we might truly belong.

It was our first visit to Piha; that wild and treacherous strip of beach on the west coast of New Zealand, where the land tilts itself defiantly into the Tasman Sea. When we poured out of the car and ran onto the beach, I hopped from foot to foot, for the black volcanic sand was like standing on a cooker hotplate. So I raced to the sea.

The girl was no more than eighteen, a slip of sunlight made flesh, waving her bikini top over her head in the bright air as she rose from the white chaos of the surf. She was a creature of the sea itself, half-born of the foam, calling to life every foolish nerve in me. I felt the hot flush of guilt and shame on my neck.

I remember the hot black sand biting into the soles of my feet, the blue of the afternoon swelling with heat and freedom, and me: a man too old to be running, racing to the sea for salvation. Behind me were my wife, our three children, and the old Labrador, all watching my foolish dash as though I were some figure of comic relief in a family film.

But Piha is no place for foolishness. The fishermen know that; they line the basalt rock promontory that juts out like the broken prow of an ancient ship, the smell of salt and bait heavy in the air. They know the sea here is a thing of treachery, how the sand drops away beneath your feet, close to the shoreline, how the rips form and vanish like moods, pulling the unwary out to the deep.

But I did not know. I was still laughing when the first wave hit me, and by the third I was a boy again, caught in the sea’s dare, flinging myself forward, breath burning, heart alive.

Then I paused and looked back. My family were smaller now, as if being gently drawn backwards up the beach, the entire world slipping away behind them. The current had taken me. The water at my chest tugged like a hand from below, and in that instant I felt the first clean jolt of fear.

I struck out hard for the shore, arms cutting, lungs heaving, and saw the fishermen shake their heads as if at some inevitable folly. Their rods arced above the waves; I was nothing to them but a nuisance among the mackerel. My feet searched for the seabed and found only distance. My strength ebbed out of me like water from a cracked bowl. Again and again the sea pulled me back, each wave a hand closing over my head.

Then, a pause in the body’s storm; I rolled onto my back, breathing the sky. My wife’s voice reached me as if from another world. She was urging a group of boys to help. I saw them: young, strong, and unafraid. They linked hands; arms outstretched, forming a fragile chain into the waves. I swam to them. One boy’s hand reached towards mine, and for a terrible heartbeat, I believed in rescue. But the distance widened in an instance as the rip dragged me away once more.

I caught the last look on my wife’s face: not fear now, but something older, some deep recognition that life is a thin thread easily cut. My children stood mute in the shallows. No one moved. There was no surf lifeboat here, nor even a lifebuoy, and no hero waiting in the wings. The fishermen kept their gaze to the sea, loyal to their lines and lures.

I turned sideways as my brain registered an inescapable truth: the force of the outgoing rip was stronger than my best efforts against it. So, reason turned fear into survival mode, and I swam across the current. The rocks loomed nearer. Their sharp-edged black faces were slick with kelp and the razored rims of mussel and oyster shells. I clawed at the seaweed; it slipped through my fingers like wet hair. My feet found no mercy, only the slicing kiss of stone and shell.

At last I heaved myself up, trembling and bloodied, and crawled to the fisherman’s path. When I reached the sand again, I lay there, arms outstretched above my head like a sun-dried starfish. My shoulders and chest shuddered with exhaustion and relief. Blood from dozens of cuts seeped into the black sand beneath me, red against black: the colours of warning, of shame, of gratitude that still breathes.

My wife stood over me, holding her tears as though they too might drown us. She would not speak, not in front of the children. Her thoughts would spill out in the muted breath of the night, reminding me of my failings. But our second son crouched beside me, his small shadow falling across my cheek. He leaned close, his voice the gentlest knife.

I thought you were a strong swimmer. He said.

And I was once.