People are streaming out of houses all along the beach. I see Michael, a friend who works in the guesthouse to our right, sprint into the water and fling a float attached to a rope – but the onshore breeze blows it back to his feet. Damian, another friend who works in the villa to our left, comes flying down the bank from the pool and hurls a life ring out to sea, but again the wind blows it back. As each rescue attempt flops, the scene begins to look like some sort of surreal slapstick pantomime; we are cartoonish in our frantic helplessness. For a fleeting moment I actually cringe, mortified to be the cause of such a public spectacle.
Because obviously Tony is going to be alright. For all the drama, he hasn’t actually gone under. The swimmers will reach him any second now, and in half an hour he will be drinking a Red Stripe and complaining about sand in his ears.
I am right. The swimmers do get to him. Somehow they have Michael’s float in their hand, and Michael is holding his end of the rope. The three men cluster around the float with Tony in their arms, and Michael stands in the surf and pulls. I take the rope in front of him, like a two-person tug-of-war team, and together we haul them ashore.
It is over. The panic has exhausted its jeopardy. Michael and I drag Tony onto the sand, and for the first time since I carried Jake out of the ocean I remember him. Now that Tony is safe, I turn my attention to our son. ‘Sweetheart, are you okay?’
He has not moved from the spot where I left him, and is sitting with legs outstretched, squirming. His hands rake the sand. ‘No.’ He is staring past my legs at his father, wide-eyed and white, his voice thin with anxiety. ‘No, I’m worried about Tony.’ I turn, expecting to see Tony sitting up. But he isn’t. His eyes aren’t even open. He is just lying there.
What? For a fraction of a second I’m confused. Then I think I understand. Oh Tony, I think, I know this was a proper scare – but there’s no need to ham it up and spin it out for the sake of the anecdote. Come on, Tone. Just sit up and open your eyes now so we can go back to being on holiday.
‘Dec,’ Jake says behind me. I turn back to look at him. ‘What’s that white stuff coming out of Tony’s nose?’
And then I see it. From each nostril, snaking down to his chin, trickles a stream of white foam. It looks like whipped egg white. I stare at it in shock. I have no idea what that foam is, or what it signifies. I am not a doctor. But even I can see it looks sinister, and dread begins to wrap itself around me.
Don’t be ridiculous, I tell myself. He probably just needs to vomit up a bucketload of seawater. But still Tony doesn’t move. I want to scream at him, ‘Wake up! A joke’s a joke, now wake the fuck up!’ But Jake is at my side, and Tony is surrounded by a semicircle of men, one of whom is kneeling over him and appears to be administering CPR. Tony really is unconscious. But he’s going to come round any moment. It’s just that the process will be messier than I had imagined. It is probably best, I think, if Jake does not watch.
‘Let’s go back up to the cottage and find Joe,’ I suggest lightly, taking his hand. ‘Joe’s probably wondering where we’ve got to.’ I lead Jake up the path back to the cottage, and find Joe on the deck, leaning over the railings, straining to see the commotion on the beach.
‘Is Tony going to be okay?’ Jake asks. ‘I think so,’ I say brightly, but even I can hear how brittle my breeziness sounds. ‘I think the doctors will come and make him better.’ Struggling to appear calm, I make my way into our bedroom to search for my phone. I think I have found it until I try to make a call and realise I am stabbing wildly at an iPod. By the time I locate my phone and call Jake’s, my fingers are shaking and I misdial twice before getting through.
A receptionist answers the phone with what feels like the longest greeting in the history of the hospitality industry: ‘Hello, this is Colleen speaking, welcome to Jake’s hotel in Treasure Beach. How may I direct your call?’ Before she can get it all out I hear myself screaming, ‘Send help now! Tony has been pulled from the water. He is unconscious. Send help now! Send someone, now!’ I hang up in a blur of shock, worried that I will have frightened Jake and Joe, embarrassed about sounding deranged, afraid that I will have caused an unnecessary fuss, and scared that help will not arrive in time.
‘We want to see Tony,’ Joe says. ‘Can we go and see him?’ I don’t know what to do, but think he must have come round by now, and the sooner the boys can see that he is fine the better. I take them by the hand and together we walk back down the path to the beach.
Where did all these people come from? Half an hour ago the beach had been deserted; now it looks like a carnival. People are streaming in from every direction; they are pouring through our garden, down the lane, along the beach. As we reach the gate I spot my friend Annabelle racing across the sand and falling to her knees beside Tony. Oh thank God, I think. Annabelle has medical training. Now that Annabelle is here, everything is going to be alright.
With Jake in one hand and Joe in the other, I lead them past the crowds and down to the water’s edge. From here we can see Annabelle’s back as she kneels over Tony. She knows what she is doing. Any second now he is going to throw up and come round; it can only be a matter of time. Someone in the crowd shouts at me, ‘Get your car keys, take him to the doctor!’ But the nearest hospital is half an hour away; how is that going to help?
As we stand and watch, warm waves lapping at our ankles, my mind allows just one horrifying thought. What if Tony has been unconscious for so long that when he comes round he will be brain-damaged? Please God no. This idea is so unthinkably shocking that when I see Annabelle press two fingers to his neck, it takes me a moment to register the significance. I stare, bewildered. Why is she checking for a pulse?
Annabelle’s fingers remain pressed to his neck. Then she looks up at the ring of faces gazing down at Tony and slowly shakes her head. I watch in disbelief. Is this some sort of joke? I keep staring, stunned. No. No no no no.
‘Let’s go back up to the cottage,’ I hear myself say, and lead the boys past the crowd towards the garden gate. Suddenly we feel quite peripheral to the drama; we slip quietly away, as if this scene on the beach, this unfolding catastrophe, has nothing to do with us at all. And in my mind, it almost hasn’t. What they all think is happening here right now cannot be true; it is not happening. We climb the path together in silence. I am too dazed to form words. As we enter the cottage a figure races past the open kitchen window and I hear him say ‘Him dead’, but still I do not believe it. They are wrong. In a minute Annabelle is going to come and tell us Tony is conscious and fine.
‘Will Tony be okay?’ asks one of the boys. ‘I hope so,’ I reply. ‘I think a doctor is on his way.’ I look at them, and see that Jake is still in his pyjamas. They are caked in sand.
‘Let’s go and wash all this sand off,’ I suggest, and as if in a dream I lead them into the bathroom. We are going to do something normal; it is going to make everything normal. I perch on the edge of the bath, and turn on the shower. Water explodes everywhere, drenching me. As I wrestle with the shower head I register the silence of boys who would ordinarily fall about at such comedic misfortune. I look up from the edge of the bath to the door and see Annabelle standing in the door frame. She gazes straight at me, unsmiling, and very slowly shakes her head.
I stumble into her arms. ‘No!’ I am shouting at her. She holds me tightly; I cannot stand. I lurch back, staring at her face, willing her to say I have misunderstood. ‘Dec,’ Jake says softly. He stares up at me, frightened. ‘Why is your face like that? What’s happening?’ I open my mouth, but no sound comes out. Joe wraps his arm around my leg and peers up anxiously. ‘Has Tony died-ed?’ he asks.
I look down at my children. ‘Yes. Yes, he has. Tony has died.’
My memories of the days before Tony drowned must be unreliable, because in my mind they resemble the opening scenes of a cheap horror film. Every moment now seems so laced with menacing pathos that our oblivion to what was coming