"Caspian, dear," said Lucy. "You knew we'd have to go back to our own world sooner or later."
"Yes," said Caspian with a sob, "but this is sooner."
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, C S Lewis
When Roxi, (whose real name is so much nicer - I don't know why I am so fond of giving totally inadequate pseudonyms to people) left England to go back to her home in New Zealand, I genuinely found myself gazing, mournfully at her empty desk long after she had ceased to be my colleague. We kept in touch but the odd early morning/late night Skype chats were wonderful but wholly inferior to that easy pleasure that comes with daily contact with a person you care about.
My feelings, therefore, as we prepare to drive to Roxi's house, are fluttery and excitable, even half nervous. Roxi and I had been planning this trip since the moment she left, well before M and I had taken the plunge and started to consider taking a world wide adventure with any serious intent. She left me with a little wooden picture of Tauranga, her home in New Zealand, depicting the beach, and, with it, a fondly repeated mental picture of her and I drinking a glass of wine on the beach while the boys surfed. It was our way of putting off the pain of goodbyes. We are not saying goodbye, we said to each other, we are saying, 'see you soon.'
It has been four years.
I find myself stopping in the car park of the supermarket, where we have bought wine, putting mascara on in the wing mirror of the van, having not worn any make up other than a smear of lipstick since Langkawi. Am I trying to seduce Cal (pseudonym), Roxi's husband? Am I trying to undo the effect of those four years on my face? I don't know. I never know, but am equally liable to do this again as we fly home and we prepare to greet our families again. Perhaps it's not about the cosmetics, but the sense of occasion.
All of which poise and elegance is lost, immediately we carefully navigate our way into the driveway. She appears in the doorway, I have one of those brief rushes of emotion, leap out of the car while M is still parking and grab her.
When we pull apart, giggling like breathless teenagers and I pull myself together enough to greet Cal and introduce poor M, both of us are seized with a sort of flighty weirdness and can't concentrate on talking. Cal leads us on a tour of the house which gives Roxi and I time to try to calm down and behave rather more normally. Cal's palpable pride in the house which they have both lovingly created, and especially the garden, with its plump chilli's and huge deep green cucumbers, is contagious. It is a house made beautiful by the love poured into it, markedly unmaterialistic in its contents, but nurtured and cared for as though it is an annex to their marriage. And in a way it is.
As for Cal, I had met him only once before, when he gave me a lift home after a session of 'working on Roxi's CV', which had turned rather swiftly into a bottle of wine and a chat. I hadn't spent any real time with him, and Roxi's time in England, at least when I knew her, had been stressful and the two had been trying to deal with one of those periods in life where it seems you are being pelted with general misfortune.
Now, as they show us round and we open some wine with crackers and the pesto which has now become a 'taste memory' of being with Roxi and Cal, I see them, surrounded by their life and the tokens of their travels, and ornaments, notebooks and other much loved souvenirs of Roxi's mother's life (which serve to add further to that sense of a house built with love), I see Cal's supportiveness, his journeying with Roxi through her grief, and that fluttering settles as I absorb their normality, their daily life. And although this is a sad time for both of them, I can see that Roxi is happy, and that Cal is great.
We sit on the deck in the evening, talking and sipping wine until the time amazes us in how quickly it disappears, and the moon is high in the sky, and considering sinking. Cal is warm and funny, earnest about his moral and ethical codes and easily loveable. Roxi is everything I remember and more, gentle and giving, putting others before herself to an extent that is almost unfathomable, full of interest and enthusiasm and emotional honesty without that self absorption that so often accompanies it - and also, always, infinitely loveable. I have not asked M what he thinks, having never met either of them and as I look at him in the candle light, reflected in red through his wine glass, I am looking forward to asking him later, so I can enjoy hearing the answer, which I know will be positive. I feel as though I somehow invented Roxi and Carl and am hugely proud of how brilliantly I did it.
We talk of everything and nothing. In a gesture that once again leaves me amazed at the generosity and hospitality of others, Roxi and Cal present us with a huge bag full of supplies that we might not normally have bought with our meagre budget (which we are constantly blowing). There are sweets and chocolate, cheese and crackers and wine and (my personal favourite) two coffee cups with lids and colourful depictions of life in New Zealand. These, we will even get to keep and take home with us. M's personal favourite are the 'toffee pop' biscuits. (These will be gone quite quickly and are very unlikely to survive long enough to take home with us, though the memory of them will.) It's incredibly generous.
We spend the next day normalising and talking. Roxi and I manage to lose our giddiness enough to talk sensibly about her mum. There is much to be done, all of which is tiring and stressful but Roxi's attitude towards her grief, an acceptance of it, a lack of hesitance to express it, coupled with a practicality and rational understanding which I have not seen ever before in anyone else and very much doubt I would achieve myself, overwhelms me in admiration for her. Tell her this - and she shrugs it off. People so rarely realise when they do something special.
We go out that evening to one of the many jealousy inducing interesting places in Tauranga, for a drink and some food. We discuss morality and the importance of doing the right thing and identifying what that thing is. We must have looked at New Zealand that day, must have seen landscapes and learned things, but once again, for me, the landscape, my experience and memories of it, are overtaken by the people. But then, perhaps they are the landscape.
"Adventures are never fun while you're having them."
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, C S Lewis
We plan to go surfing. A word on this. There has been much thought fuzzing about in my head about the surfing. Roxi and I have always planned that the boys would be doing it, mostly I think to give us more of the wine. I had said I would like to try it to, because I have always thought it might be fun. Besides it looks easy. Everyone who does it always seems to have that easy, laid back air to them, as though they worry about nothing and surfing is just a thing they do, like other people watch TV. They arent the kind of people who get het up about anything, I don't imagine blood sweat and tears when I watch them, effortless riding about on the water under the sun. So it must be easy, right? Little do I know.
But the fact is I am, characteristically, a little scared.
Before we met Cal and spent any time with him, I had been a little concerned that by volunteering M to surf with Cal while we chatted was a little like those times when you are a child, and you are supposed to be best friends with some horrible child you have nothing in common with because your mums are friends. You get told to, 'run off and play with so and so' in a clear message that you are supposed to go away, and so you stand about shuffling your feet awkwardly. Both hoping for the time to pass quickly. (Just as a note of fairness to my poor mum, I don't remember her doing this particularly, but somehow, every child is familiar with it. It's just a known element of what you tend to consider to be parental torture.)
Clearly, in the case of M and Cal, this is not going to be a problem. Cal is, easy, enthusiastic company, and M has clearly warmed to him straight of. He's perfectly comfortable. It's hard not to be with Cal.
But I am still a little scared. What if I betray my fear and have some sort of a random panic attack akin to when we first when snorkelling? What if I am the only person in the world who can't surf? Will it change Cal and Roxi's view of me?
Of course not, I know this. If they were that small minded they wouldn't be Cal and Roxi. I take my usual strategy and try to be honest about it, and make it a joke. It always works for me. Laughing at yourself with others will warm them to you, they usually identify in some way and will forgive you the shortcoming you have laid bare to them. Even more importantly, fears are there to be laughed at, as are shortcomings. Take them seriously and they cripple you. Laughing at them robs them of their power, and very often, because people will meet you half way, provide advice or teach you, and because you have labeled your misgivings as having only comedy value, you actually get over whatever it is before you've started.
I try on one of Roxi's wet suits the night before. It causes much hilarity. Not the final image, in all its rather unforgiving glory, but the process of trying to get the damn thing on. I spend about half an hour trying to get it half way up my shins. (Well they're very sticky and tight.) Rather like most sports bras, getting into it is a work out in itself. Of course M is fine.l and shimmies into his as though it were a favourite pair of jeans. I look at him enviously from my position on the floor. It's genuinely quite a lot of fun, and part of my weakness is caused by being rendered a little helpless with laughter. As are most other people in the room.
I am not convinced, though, that my inability to put the suit on is a good omen for my emerging surf skills. Later a friend from England will see the picture we take of me in my wet suit, holding a surf board, and responds with a peal of laughter. Which, when you consider that posed picture is the only hope I have of suggesting some kind of aptitude, rather ruins the facade.
We begin by climbing the beautiful Mount Mounganui, sheep covered and sugar lumped shaped, after a stunning breakfast at yet another interesting little place in Tauranga, then meet Cal at the beach side for the surf.
We get changed into swimsuits and wet suits in the back of Cal's van, which is a slightly unnerving experience given the tinted windows. Which we are assured no one can see in, but it feels a little odd, sat there in flagrante, contorted into some sort of circus pose in an attempt to don't a wet suit, and with a perfectly clear view outside.
I manage to get the suit on with relative ease this time and feel a little more confident. There's still a chance I might be good at this.
Cal, it turns out, is a born teacher. He genuinely loves to share his passion for surfing, and, surprise surprise, surfers aren't the laid back, born surfing, people I had imagined. They are disciplined athletes, learning in all kinds of weathers, practising in all conditions, returning with aching muscles at the end of the day and getting up early to do it all again before reality, that party pooper, calls them in to work. We begin by practising on the sand. Cal draws a surf board shape and we work on getting our posture right for lying on the board, and then using our arms to do a sort of 'burpee' action and leap upright.
I am still finding my arms are a little weak on the sand. This, I realise, with that thrill which is somewhere between excitement and dread, might be harder than I thought.
"Ah, you've come over the water. Powerful wet stuff, ain't it?"
C S Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader
And salty. For some unknown reason I am incapable of facing an incoming wave or an inevitable roll off the board, with my mouth in any position other than open. Quite what this instinct is, I am unsure. A sense of being taken by surprise maybe? Or a sort of scream?
"When you see the wave coming," says Cal with some concern, "immediately close your mouth and hold your breath till you come up."
I nod gravely. A wave comes. I surface, coughing.
Cal is immensely patient. He stands by my side, coaxing and coaching until I can guide the board out to the right depth, over the waves. A simple skill, but it takes me some time to master it. Looking back on it now I realise that Cal did teach me something, because whatever else I couldn't do at the end, I did manage to master the getting out there. More practice - quite a lot more practice - and I might have slowly been able to surf.
"OK, there's the wave, you need to jump on...now!"
says Cal. There is a short delay. I jump. It's a little too late.
"Sorry" I say, "I think I have slow reactions."
"No problem," says Cal, laughing but ultimately actually angelically patient, "I'll just tell you a few minutes before I actually want you to get on."
This tactic actually works quite well, and I manage to throw myself onto my surf board, get myself into more or less the right position, wobble a bit, because it's surprisingly hard to balance even lying flat on the surfboard, and ride the wave into the shore.
This part, is my favourite. It's quite a thrill lying on a board, feeling the power of the wave beneath you. I feel, I think, a small part of what 'real' surfers must feel when they catch a wave. Only it's a sort of safe version. I repeat this lying on the board and letting the wave carry me into the beach until Cal tells me gently, that I might want to try to stand up on the next one.
I give it a go. There is something in me that always chickens out at the last minute, so I can get into my knees so that I am, briefly, kneeling on the board, and then I topple off.
"Watch out'" says Cal, "remember what I told you, always keep the board on the right side of you so it doesn't come back and hit you in the..."
Bash. The board connects with my jaw.
The trouble is, it is difficult to think straight in the surf. A wave comes and there's no time for ponderous positioning of yourself. You have to be doing it automatically, instinctively.
I wade, I ride, I kneel, I roll, I splutter. Then I do it all again. Does it not sound fun? It is, though. It actually really is.
By the time I admit defeat and come out, I have swallowed several gallons of sea water, my arms don't work any more and I am covered in bruises which I am very proud of. I am enormously happy. And also, though I don't know it yet, very sunburnt. I have a bright red face for the rest of the evening. (I did! I DID put sun tan lotion on! It just didn't work...)
M, to my immense pride, has already managed to stand up on the board. He is a natural. He even looks the part.
"You look good as a surfer" I tell him, kissing his salty face as he strides about in the surf, board under his arm, for all the world as though he owned the sea and everything in it. His eyelashes are wet and his eyes the very bright shade of blue they go when he is happy. He is flushed and curly haired and exhilarated. Oh yes, he's a natural. And he's hooked. When Roxi and I go to get changed, he and Cal stay in. Cal is flushed too, with pride at the progress of his pupil, and that rush you get when somebody shares your passion. They are both in their element.
We eat at my favourite of all the amazing Tauranga places, the 'Pizza Library'. Themed on books, which immediately captures me, ofe pizzas are imaginative, especially the vegetarian ones, and the place is full of quirk and fun, waitresses and bar tenders wearing Alice in Wonderland style hats, funny or wise quotes written on the walls, and all the chairs made out of old train seats. There is a piano, which people are playing and singing by, and outside there are statues of Elvis. It's brilliant. People glance, curiously, at my red face.
Then we sit in the hot springs beneath Mount Manganui, and talk about everything under the sun. Cal, with characteristic warmth and friendliness, notices the scars from my operation, and asks me about them. I am gratified because people often look but rarely ask, making me feel uncomfortable but without a chance to explain. Other people seem slightly disgusted by the explanation, so that I feel as though I ought to be a little ashamed. Cal does neither of those things, and as I tell him, and Roxi, who knows about the operation, chimes in, admiring of my apparent braveness (I wasn't at all brave), I start to feel as though the scars are a thing to be proud of.
Later, hot pools will prove to be something of a nemesis, giving me horrible dehydration headaches as I am unable to take enough water on.
In Tauranga, fast becoming my idea of paradise, this somehow isn't a problem.
We sit for a while, Roxi beautiful in her bikini and looking like some sort of female ideal in the dimming light, blonde hair gleaming. I realise again how beautiful she is, both inside and out and I am pleased that this reunion, so long planned, has finally come about.
We just about manage to climb out of the hot pools before we fall asleep. There are plans to surf some more tomorrow.
"And when I can swim no longer, if I have not reached Aslan’s country, or shot over the edge of the world into some vast cataract, I shall sink with my nose to the sunrise"
C S Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader
It's a bit rougher in the waves today. They seem big and scary, the sort of wave i was taught to stay away from when I was small. The waves are big and they knick me off my feet even before I have climbed onto my board. They make me feel small.
"When you see a wave," instructs Cal, "you have several choices depending on it's size. You van ride over it with your board, or dive underneath it so it doesn't knock you off balance."
These are all the sorts of waves you are supposed to dive under.
"Dive now!" Shouts Cal.
I intend to. I really do, but when I look up at the wave, so much taller than I am, some instinct kicks in and I just turn around and try to run.
You can't, as I am sure you will be intelligent enough to realise, out run a wave. I swallow a lot of sea water and perform some spectacular forward rolls in the surf, surf board beating the back of my head indignantly, as if berating me for this ridiculous behaviour.
Eventually, having nevertheless much enjoyed myself, I admit a certain defeat. I have tried surfing and enjoyed the experience. But I'm not, even with Cal's impressive skills as a teacher, going to win any awards for it.
Roxi and I get out, leaving M and Cal, joyfully riding waves and having the sort of fun together that would make that hypothetical mother I talked about earlier, very happy. Both M and Cal, as Roxi and I report happily to each other, have separately eulogised about how great they think the other is.
When, later in our visiting, Roxi and I take a walk around the foot of the Mount while the boys have a third go at surfing together, me basking in this luxury of seeing Roxi so easily and so naturally, as though we didn't live at opposite ends of the globe, and hadn't done so for years, we find M surfing triumphantly into the beach, fully upright and mist impressive on his board. He is a good pupil and he has a good teacher. Looking at the joy on his face, I wonder if we will ever live somewhere where he could truly take up surfing. The UK is not generally well known for its surf, though I hear Cornwall is quite good. He'll need some top class wet suits though. English seas are not known for their relaxing temperatures.
"Most of us, I suppose, have a secret country but for most of us it is only an imaginary country. Edmund and Lucy were luckier than other people in that respect."
There are just so many cool things here. In New Zealand in general, but Tauranga in particular. I have vivid memories of the pizza library, the pub called Astro Lobe, complete with astro turf and picnic benches and the ubiquitous craft beer, naked people in the distance, climbing out on the rocks over a foamy bright sea as Roxi and I still a round the base of the Mount, sheep grazing in the sides of it. Cal racing excitedly through his garden, pressing chili's and cucumbers into our hands, the night sky above us as we lye back in the hot pools, eating pancakes in the sunshine after the surf.
On Tuesday morning we leave reluctantly and get on the road again.
Our goodbyes are not prolonged. Roxi and I say "see you later", because, as we justify it, we really will. We just don't know how much later. In fact we are planning to meet Roxi again when we climb Mount Tongariro later, so we hang onto that plan and ignore the other 'see you later', the one that might be years in the waiting.
"Do not look sad. We shall meet soon again." "Please, Aslan", said Lucy,"what do you call soon?"
"I call all times soon" said Aslan; and instantly he was vanished away."
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