Chapter 42There Are No Flags to the North

At ten to six, Dean woke. No one had called him, and the alarm had not gone off. He lived on the first floor of the small building behind the hotel. The curtains were drawn, and through the gap came a strip of greyish-white light.

He did not get out of bed straight away. First he straightened his left leg and held it there a while. At this hour the bone spur in his knee was at its quietest. It had been there seventeen years. Every time he bent the leg, it touched the same place first, touched it precisely, like touching a door that never opened.

The knee brace lay on the bedside table, black, the lining worn to a shine, its four straps ranged from top to bottom. He pulled it on and drew the straps back one by one. The first notch, the second notch. The second notch pressed on the bone spur, so he undid it and fastened it at the third notch instead. The edge of the third notch fell just below the bone spur, pressing on flesh, not bone.

Over the back of the chair by the bed hung a towel. Last night he had wiped greasy hands on it, and it had dried stiff. He took it down, put it over his shoulder and went downstairs.

On the ninth stair he stopped for a moment and looked down at his shoes. Two of them, the same. The toe of the left one had sand on it. He did not brush it off.

Downstairs the washing machine was turning. The kitchen door was open, and someone inside was talking, fast. He did not catch it.

He stood at the window for a while. Someone in the lane pushed a row of empty bins past. The bins rolled on the ground, loud, and then the sound slowly went away.

At half past six he went out the back door and crossed the Esplanade. The palm trees along the road leaned in the wind and came straight again. The sky was grey. The undersides of the clouds in the east showed white. The sun was behind the clouds and did not reach the sand. The sea wind came down the street from the corner, carrying salt.

※

The sand was cool. He carried his shoes in his hand and walked north along the water’s edge. The tide was out as far as it went. The edge of the wet sand was flat, in lines, one after another, left by the night’s waves. In the morning the sound of the waves was nearer than at night, one beat after another, pressing on the sand. There were already a few people on the sand. An old man was walking a dog. The dog ran to the water and ran back. Two women were running along the waterline, their footprints one in front of the other.

In the water to the north were a few surfers. They wore black wetsuits and lay on their boards, waiting for waves beyond the second rock. A wave came, and one by one they were lifted and set down again. The flag line was behind them. They did not look back.

He watched for a while. Since he was twenty-nine, he had not gone into the water to the north again. One of them tumbled out of a wave, lay on his board, paddled twice towards the shore, then turned and went back out.

The old building on the street corner was the surf club, white walls, nothing on the flagpole by the door. As a boy, every weekend, he had waited there for his name to be called.

There was a story everyone round here had told. In the early eighties, a nine-year-old girl was carried three hundred metres out by a rip current, and her mother shouted from the shore. It was a lifeguard who swam out and dragged her back. That year the lifeguard was twenty-one. The people telling the story would stop for a moment here, and then say that from then on, more and more flags were planted.

When he heard the story as a boy, all he remembered was the number: three hundred metres.

As a teenager he had surfed off this stretch of sand himself. In those days, on the surf club’s roll, his name was written as Dan. The summer he was sixteen, he could swim from the first rock north of the flag line to the third in one go, without resting, and when he came out his legs were shaking.

That summer, early every morning, someone called the roll on the sand of the flagged area. The person calling it sat on a white-painted chair, in a grey vest, a white cord across his chest with a silver whistle on it. He called them one by one, and each person called answered once. The roll book had a white cover, its page edges curling. When he was called he answered quickly, and someone wrote down Dan in the roll book, the strokes faint, the last letter barely there. He did not go and correct it. Dan and Dean sounded much the same.

The sand was cold then. Stepping on it barefoot made your toes curl. Everyone stood in a row, stood without moving, and waited for the names to go past one by one.

The year he was fourteen, he tried to swim outside the flags to reach a drifting board. Someone pulled him back out of the waves, and as punishment he copied out the flag rules in the duty room. He copied a whole page, every letter the same size. When he finished, his hand rested on the paper a long time, until the ink was dry.

The year he was twenty-nine, a wave pinned him by the rocks. A big wave pushed up from behind him and pressed his left knee against the edge of a rock, pressed once, then pulled away. At the time it did not seem like anything. Later a bone spur grew in the knee, and he knew it every time he walked. He stopped going into the water and stayed in the kitchen by the sea. He had stayed seventeen years.

Under the third rock there was a white-painted steel box. Half the paint had come off, showing the colour of the iron underneath. The lid was not fastened. It rested at a slant. Inside were a coil of white rope and a white ring buoy, the end of the rope tied off with a rubber band. The way the rope was folded had not changed in years. Every morning he stopped here, looked at the box, looked at the water.

At the foot of the rock the tide had gone as far out as it would go. The water stayed there and did not move. To the north of the rock a dark channel of water ran out from the shore. The water in the channel was flatter than on either side, with no white water, like a cloth pressed flat. That was the rip current. It was not fast. It just pulled slowly outwards.

He crouched and looked for a long time. He could see clearly where the edges of the channel were. He made a note in his head: the channel is north of the third rock, about two body lengths from its foot.

He stood up, and his knee clicked. The third notch held, and there was no more pain.

He looked back to the south.

On the sand to the south, the lifesavers’ patrol vehicle was parked at the south end of the flagged area, its back open, the radio on, a woman reading the weather: northerly wind, waves one point two metres. Beside it leaned a few rescue boards, the lettering on them bleached away by the sun. Two people in hi-vis vests were straightening the flags the wind had knocked crooked in the night, setting them upright one by one and planting them back in their concrete sockets. The poles were white, the flag cloth bleached grey by the sun, a thin line of red still left along the edge. When the wind blew, it made a very small sound.

They stopped at the northernmost one. North of that one, there was nothing on the sand.

There were no flags at the north end.

He walked back from the sand to the corner of the Esplanade and looked up at the tower. The tower stood at the far end of the street, its body very tall, the glass lead-grey, the white window bands rising one after another from the bottom upwards until they broke off at the clouds. The clouds hung low, one whole sheet, grey and flat. The top of the tower was behind them. Nothing of it could be seen.

He put his shoes on and walked back to the hotel.

※

At half past two, he went into the kitchen.

The kitchen had no windows, only the back door and the glass of the pass. By the door of the cool room hung a sheet, printed, one hour to a line, to be filled in every two hours. The boxes took only whole numbers. There was no room left for a decimal point.

Once in, he washed vegetables, chopped spring onions, made stock. The bones in the pot bubbled and kept bubbling until the evening service.

The head chef put his head out of the office and asked, “Done the sheet?”

“Done.”

“The inspector’s coming next week.”

“I know.”

The head chef went back in.

The thermometer stood at two point six.

He took the pen and wrote three in the box. Not two. Two point six: he would not write it as two. No one looked at the sheet, and he knew that too. He had been filling it in for many years, and every time he wrote the same number.

His name badge was pinned to his left pocket, printed DAN. That was from a form filled in more than ten years ago. Changing it meant filling in another one, and he had not done it. On the rota, his name was DAN too. Nobody in the kitchen looked at the rota. They all called him Dean.

The chiller was outside the cool room, third shelf.

Leah, the pastry chef, had gone into the bakery at half past four that morning. The things she left always arrived before anyone else’s. One lamington, in a white paper bag, one corner of the bag’s mouth folded over once, pressed very flat, the crease turned inwards. The empty paper bag he had left on the third shelf yesterday was gone.

A trolley went past outside the back door, its wheels rattling once. It was the bakery’s. As it passed, a waft of syrup sweetness came in and soon faded.

He did not take it. He would wait until the end of his shift.

The mouth of the bag was tied with a very small knot of white string. He had never asked her why she left it.

The door of the cool room was heavy. When he pulled it open, cold air hit his face. Shutting it took a push with his shoulder, and the door gave a dull thud. He gave it that push every day. When it was shut, he wiped his hand on his trousers. The light inside was a cold white, the boxes stacked very neatly, every label facing out.

※

At twenty past three, on a break of only ten minutes, he was outside the back door scraping the hotplate.

The hotplate was a slab of iron with a layer of grease crusted on it, and it had to be scraped while hot. He pressed the scraper down, and grease spat up from the edge. One drop landed on the inside of his left forearm, just one. He did not back away. He only drew the arm in a little.

The skin went white first, then red, a small patch. After a while a blister rose, clear. The skin did not break. He made a fist with his left hand and opened it again. All five fingers moved.

He did not look at the small patch. He pushed his sleeve up so the arm was bare, and the wind from the lane blew over it, cool.

He went to the mouth of the lane, where a tap was fixed to the wall, and the water was cool. The valve was iron, its thread worn smooth, and he turned it all the way open with the palm of his hand. He held his arm under the tap. The water ran down through his fingers, onto the ground, and into the drain.

Someone was standing at the mouth of the lane.

Tall, his back to the light from the street, dressed in dark clothes. He stood by the wall, face turned towards the sea, not moving. Above his left forearm hung a very thin, warm-coloured line, circling the arm, turning slowly.

Dean looked once and did not look a second time. The man’s shoes were clean. There was no sand on the soles.

The man turned round. He looked at Dean’s arm first, looked for a while, then looked at the tap.

“Cold water. Ten minutes.”

Dean pulled his arm out and shook off the water. “Where are you headed?”

The man paused for half a beat before he spoke.

“North. Where can I go in the water?”

Dean glanced north. The Esplanade, the beach, the rocks, all of it was there. He said, “Between the flags. There are no flags to the north.”

The man nodded once. “Thank you.”

His voice was low, his sentences short, and after each one he would pause a long time before saying the next. When this man spoke, every sentence sounded as if it had been counted. His accent was not from here.

“I’m Dean,” Dean said.

“Andrew.”

A dog tag hung on his chest, silver-grey, on a double chain, the chain coming round from the back of his neck. There was nothing written on the dog tag, not even a number. Dean saw it and did not ask.

Dean wiped his wet hands twice on his apron, wiped them very slowly, until his hands were dry.

The man turned and walked north. After a few steps he stopped, raised his left hand and glanced at his forearm. The thin line was still turning. He lowered his hand and walked on.

※

At half past four, he carried a plate of cold starters through the pass.

On the other side of the glass was the dessert counter. Box after box of desserts was lined up on it under glass covers, and the lights were white. Leah stood behind the counter, a streak of white dust on her apron.

The man was standing in front of the counter.

He did not look at the menu. Leah took one out of a box, one from the edge, without chocolate, the white sponge. She put it on a sheet of paper and pushed it across.

The man paid. He did not use a card. He took coins from his pocket and pushed them onto the counter one at a time. He pushed one, paused, pushed another. At the third coin his hand stopped, stopped for half a beat, and only then went on pushing. The knuckles of that hand were thick, and on the back of it were a few very faint old marks, paler than the skin.

Leah did not hurry him. She looked at the row of coins and waited for him to finish.

She counted out the change and pushed it back one coin at a time, into the palm of his hand.

She said two words.

Through the glass Dean could not hear her, but he could tell from the shape of her mouth that it was “Thank you”.

The man nodded once, put the things in his pocket, turned and walked towards the door. He did not look towards the pass.

Leah put the coins into the small drawer and pushed the drawer shut, all the way. Then she wiped the counter over once, wiping the place where the row of coins had lain.

Dean set the cold starters on the pass and made sure they were steady.

※

When the evening service began, it was not yet fully dark.

Seen from the back door, at the far end of the street, the white window bands of the tower were still there, rising, rising into the clouds. Not one light on the tower was lit. The stove fires burned steadily, the flames close against the bottoms of the pans, not wavering. The sea wind came in at the back door, carrying salt, lifting the corners of the papers by the chopping board and letting them fall. In the lane a cat sat on top of a bin, watching him.

In the restaurant, a small child pressed against the glass door to look into the kitchen. After a while its mother pulled it away. The song in the restaurant changed. He could not tell what song it was.

At half past seven, he carried a big bucket of grease scraps out of the back door and glanced towards the mouth of the lane while he was at it. Across the Esplanade, in the middle of the beach, a grey figure was sitting. It was getting dark, and he could not see clearly.

At twenty to eight, he put a plate of sea bass on the pass, straightened the fish with tongs so its head pointed left, and only then let the runner take it. The bell on the pass rang once. He did not go over to see which table it was.

Before eight, he cut two boxes of rocket. Water dripped from the leaves onto the board, and he swept it off with the back of the knife. A table of three, all ordering fish, two of them to be filleted.

He turned fish on the hotplate. The skin came over with a charred ring round the edge, and he pressed it flat with the spatula. If he stood too long his left knee would bow outwards, so every hour he shifted his weight, leaning a little to the right as he did, and no one saw. He was on his third apron. The grease stains on the first two would not wash out.

At eight, a docket was slapped down in front of him, twelve portions. He counted them once. All done. The table numbers on the docket were written in biro, and he could read every one.

The head chef passed the hotplate, looked at the fish and said, “The skin’s too burnt.”

Dean said, “I know.”

At nine, he skimmed the fat off the stockpot. The fat floated on top, and he ladled it into a small bowl, a little stock still left in the bottom. At ten past nine, the hand soap by the basin ran out, and he fetched a new bottle from the storeroom and put it in.

At ten, he took the cool room temperature once more. Still two point six. He wrote three. He put the pen back in his apron pocket. On the sheet, today’s boxes were all filled now, a row of threes.

At half past ten, the sound of water started up in the dish room. He stood at the sink and soaked his left hand in the water. When it was swollen from soaking he pulled it out, shook it, and went back to washing pans. The charred rims on the bottoms of the pans had to be scraped with steel wool, and he scraped them twice. Outside the back door the waves came one beat after another, slower than the water.

※

At half past eleven, the last docket went out.

He stood at the door of the cool room and took the lamington from the third shelf. He opened the mouth of the paper bag. White paper, the crease at the corner still there. The cake was square, cut very neatly, rolled in a layer of coconut. He took a bite, and coconut fell onto the front of his white chef’s jacket. He brushed it off with his hand.

When he had eaten it, he pressed the empty paper bag flat, folded it up, and put it back on the third shelf, in the same place as before.

The bins were outside the back door. He pushed them out, as far as the mouth of the lane.

Beyond the mouth of the lane was the Esplanade. The street lights were on, one, then another, spaced far apart. At the far end of the street, the tower was dark. There were no cars on the Esplanade, and no people. The shops across the road were all shut, their roller shutters pulled all the way down, and on one was taped a sheet of paper saying it would open at seven tomorrow morning. Nailed to a lamp post was an old sign with the lifesavers’ phone number, the writing half faded.

Across the Esplanade was the sand.

In the middle of the beach, over by the flagged area, there was a white-painted chair. Someone was sitting on it.

A grey vest.

He sat there, both hands on his knees, facing the sea. From this far, his face could not be made out. The vest was grey. Across his chest was a white cord, and from the end of the cord hung a silver whistle.

The wind came off the sea. The hem of the vest blew up and fell again.

The four legs of the chair were buried in the sand, buried deep. It had not been moved in many years. On the pole beside the chair hung a white ring buoy, its rope dangling, swinging a few times in the wind.

Since he was small, Dean had seen that man sitting on that chair. No one spoke to him. People round here called him the flag keeper. They had called him that for many years, and no one had ever asked his name.

On a bench by the road, two young people were sharing a packet of chips, eating them one at a time. Their faces were turned to the sea, and they did not look up. A delivery car drove along the Esplanade, its headlights sweeping the edge of the beach and drawing back.

In the water to the north, a white board was rising and falling.

Someone lay on the board. Swimming trunks, two legs kicking in the water, kicking very slowly.

The boy’s friend stood at the edge of the waves with a bottle of water in his hand, shouting out to the water.

“Kai! If you swim to the third rock, I’ll shout you chips for a month!”

Dean knew him. The one who jumped highest off the jetty was this boy, seventeen.

The boy looked back once in the water and did not answer. He turned his face away again, towards the north, and paddled forward once with both hands.

※

At ten to midnight, Dean locked the back door. He went out by the mouth of the lane and crossed the Esplanade. There was a piece of broken glass in the gutter at the side of the road, and he went round it. He went down the steps onto the sand, and his shoes sank in a little. He walked north.

The sand had been in the sun during the day and still held a little heat into the night.

The white pole at the north end of the flagged area was the last one. He walked up beside it, stopped for a moment, and went round it.

On the sand to the north there was nothing.

The sand underfoot was very hard. Where the tide had gone out, it had left row after row of shells. He trod on one and crushed it, a crack, very faint.

As a boy he had counted the waves in this water. One row, two rows, three rows, and at the third row he went back to shore. He had never once counted to the fourth.

He thought of the channel from that morning. North of the third rock, dark, flatter than either side.

The white board was right there.

The channel carried the board, very slowly at first, then faster. It passed the rock and kept going out. The person on the board had stopped kicking and was only holding the edges of the board with both hands.

The friend on the sand was shouting. “Kai—”

“Kai—”

Each shout higher than the last. The sound struck the rocks and bounced back, broken into pieces. The friend ran along the waterline, ran to the base of the rocks, came back, ran over again. A trail of scattered footprints was left in the sand.

Dean began to run. On the first step his knee clicked, at the place the bone spur touched. He did not stop. His breathing was fast, and there was a taste of salt in his throat.

He looked back once at the flagged area.

The man on the chair did not get up.

He sat there, both hands on his knees, the silver whistle hanging on his chest, facing the sea, not moving.

Dean stopped for a moment. What was outside the flags did not belong to that chair. That was the rule round here. He had known it since he was in his teens.

He took off his shoes. One fell over on the sand. One stood upright. He did not stand it back up.

He walked into the water. The water was cool, and the cold came quickly, climbing from his ankles to his knees. When the water reached the bone spur, it hurt once. The knee brace was still fastened at the third notch. It soaked up water and grew heavy.

The edge of the channel was right under his feet. He stepped into it. There was nothing under his feet for a moment, and then he had his footing again.

The waves came in one after another, struck him in the chest and broke apart. The broken water ran down over his shoulders and into his collar.

Over by the rocks came a dull thud: the board hitting stone. The board was still going out. It did not stop. The friend on the sand stood there, one hand still holding up the bottle of water, not lowering it.

He went forward. The water came over his waist, over his chest. Water got into his ears, and the sounds from the shore went muffled, only one layer left. In the water there was a very faint smell of seaweed, cold, salty. He reached out, caught nothing, reached out again.

Under the water his knee could not find the bottom. He reached down with his toes once, then again, and then he stopped looking for it.

※

At midnight, he was in the water, facing the open sea. He was already about forty paces from the third rock.

Behind him, white light fell from the shore. White, running down from the lights on the seventy-seventh floor, falling onto the sand, onto the water, onto his back. It was that tower. He did not look back.

The people on the shore were still shouting. The sound grew thinner and thinner, so thin that the words could not be made out.

In that second, at the corner of his eye, a disc came out in the sky to the south by east.

He did not look up.

The edge of the disc was pale violet. The bright side was a little larger than the dark side. On the bright side were white clouds, in clumps, pressed against the edge of the disc, not moving. A little above the disc, towards due south, a black mouth stood open. Round its edge ran a fine white ring. The stars outside the ring were twisted into curves.

The waves were still coming in, row after row.

Kai lay on the board, and the waves lifted the board and set it down again. Dean’s head rose and fell in the waves as well.

He did not look up. He was counting.