Elizabeth George: Careless in Red

Jago put the duffel on his bed-Selevan could see this much from where he still stood, unsure whether to sit or stand, to go or remain-and he began opening the drawers of the built-in chest. And what came to Selevan then was what should have come the moment he saw the duffel in Jago’s hands: His friend was leaving.

He said, “Where you off to, Jago?”

“What I said.” Jago came to the door again, this time a small stack of neatly folded shorts and vests in his hands. “Things’re finished here. It’s time for me to shove off. Never stay in one place long, anyway. Follow the sun, the surf, the seasons…”

“But the season’s here. It’s just coming on. It’s round the corner. Where you going to find a better season than what you’d get here?”

Jago hesitated, half turned towards the bed. It seemed that this was something he’d not considered: the where of his journey. Selevan saw his shoulders alter. There was something less definite about his posture. Selevan pressed the point.

“And anyways, you got friends here. That counts for something. Let’s face it, you see a doctor yet for those shakes of yours? I reckon they’re going to get worse, and then where’ll you be if you set off on your own?”

Jago seemed to think about this. “Doesn’t much matter, like I said. My work is finished. All’s left is the waiting.”

“For what?”

“For…you know. Neither one of us is a hatchling, mate.”

“For dying, you mean? Tha’s rubbish. You got years. What the bloody hell did those coppers do to you?”

“Not a sodding thing.”

“Can’t believe you, Jago. If you’re talking of dying-”

“Dying’s got to be faced. So’s living, for that matter. They’re part of each other. And they’re meant to be natural.”

Selevan felt a margin of relief when he heard this. He didn’t like to think of Jago pondering the idea of dying because he didn’t like to think what this suggested about his friend’s intentions. He said, “Glad to hear that, at least. The natural bit.”

“Because…?” Jago smiled slowly as comprehension dawned. He shook his head in the way a fond grandparent might react to a beloved child’s mischief. “Oh. That. Well, I could end it easy enough, couldn’t I, since I’ve finished up here and there’s not much point in carrying on. There’s lots of places to do it in these parts cause it’d look like an accident and no one’d know the difference, eh. But if I did that, might end it for him as well and we can’t have that. No. There’s no end to something like this, mate. Not if I can help it.”

CADAN HAD JUST ARRIVED at LiquidEarth when the phone call came. He could hear that his father was in the shaping room and Jago was nowhere to be found, so he answered it himself. A bloke said, “That Lewis Angarrack?” and when Cadan said no, he said, “Fetch him, eh. Got to talk to him.”

Cadan knew better than to bother Lew in the middle of shaping a board. But the bloke insisted that this couldn’t wait and no, he didn’t want to leave a message.

So Cadan went to fetch his father, not opening the door but pounding on it to be heard over the tools. The power planer switched off. Lew himself appeared, his mask lowered and his eye gear around his neck.

When Cadan told him there was a phone call for him, Lew looked into the glassing area and said, “Jago not back?”

“Didn’t see his car outside.”

“What’re you doing here, then?”

Cadan felt that old plummeting of his spirits. He stifled a sigh. “Phone,” he reminded Lew.

Lew took off the latex gloves he wore for work, and he strode to the reception area. Cadan followed for want of anything better to do, although he peeked into the spraying room and considered the lineup of shaped boards to be painted as well as the kaleidoscope of bright colours that had been tested against the walls. In reception he could hear his father saying, “What’s that you say?…No, of course not…Where the hell is he? C’n you put him on the phone?”

Cadan wandered back out. Lew was behind the counter where the phone sat amid the mounds of paperwork on the card table that served as his desk. He glanced at Cadan and then away.

“No,” Lew said to the bloke on the other end of the line. “I didn’t know…I damn well would have appreciated it if he’d told me…I know he’s not well. But all I can tell you is what he told me. Had to step out to speak to a mate in a bit of bother up at the Salthouse…You? Then you know more than I do…”

Cadan clocked that they were talking about Jago, and he did question where the old man was. Jago had been nothing if not a model employee for his dad during the time he’d worked at LiquidEarth. Indeed, Cadan often felt that Jago’s performance as a stellar worker bee was one of the reasons he himself looked so bad. At work on time, never out for illness, not a complaint about anything, nose to the grindstone, perfectionist in what he had to do. For Jago not to be here now brought up the subject of why and made Cadan listen more closely to the conversation his dad was having.

“Redundant? God, no. No reason for that. I’ve a pile of work and the last thing on my mind is making anyone…Well, then, what did he say?…Finished? Fin ished?” Lew looked round the reception area, particularly at the clipboard on which the orders for boards were attached. There was a thick stack of them, the mark of longtime surfers’ respect for Lew Angarrack’s work. No computer design and computer shaping here, but the real thing, all of it done by hand. So few craftsmen could do what Lew did. They were a dying breed, their work an art form that would pass into surfing lore like the earliest long boards fashioned of wood. In their place would come the hollow-core boards, the computerised designs, everything programmed into a machine that would belch out a product no longer lovingly shaped by a master who rode waves himself and consequently knew what an extra channel or the degree of tilt of a fin would truly do to a board’s performance. It was a pity, really.

“Gone altogether?” Lew was saying. “Damn…No. There’s nothing more I can tell you. You seem to know more than I do anyway…I couldn’t say…I’ve been busy myself. He didn’t seem any different…I can’t say that I did.”

Shortly thereafter, he rang off and he spent a moment staring at the clipboard. “Jago’s gone, then,” he finally said.

“What d’you mean, gone?” Cadan asked. “For the day? Forever? Something happen to him?”

Lew shook his head. “He just left.”

“What? Casvelyn?”

“That’s it.”

“Who was that?” Cadan nodded at the phone although his father hadn’t looked at him to see the nod.

“Bloke Jago lives by in the caravan park. Talked to him as he was packing up but couldn’t get much sense out of him.” Lew took off his headphones and dropped them onto the table. He leaned against the counter with its display of fins, wax, and other paraphernalia, his hands supporting him and his head lowered as if he were studying what was inside the case. “Well, that buggers us,” he said.

A moment passed during which Cadan saw Lew reach up and rub his neck where it was no doubt sore from shaping the surfboard blanks. He said, “Good thing I came by, then.”

“Why’s that?”

“I c’n help you out.”

Lew raised his head. He said, “Cade, I’m far too tired to argue with you just now.”

“No. I don’t mean what you think,” Cadan told him. “I c’n see how you’d reckon I was seizing my moment: Now he’ll have to let me spray the boards. But that’s not what this is.”

“What is it, then?”

“Just…me helping you. I c’n shape if you like. Not as good as you but you can show me. Or I c’n glass. Or spray. Or do the hand sanding. Doesn’t matter to me.”