Page 57 of Love Unlocked

From the start the other team show exceptional power and co-ordination and they take an early lead.

Al’s emptying his tank too quickly, feeling fire in his lungs and legs too early. He’s a human metronome, he’s supposed to set a pace for his crew that he knows they can withstand. They’re thirty-eight years old, not eighteen, they cannot sustain this pace and nor can he. He eases off, operating at ninety-five per cent, the pressure still intense but trying to undo the risk of blowing himself up. Beano calls to the crew, motivational and strategic calls. Al’s pulse is loud in his ears. His heavy breathing. Everything else around him drowned out. Nothing else matters other than this moment.

‘Maintain composure,’ Beano says. ‘We can close the gap.’

Buff picks up on Al’s change in pace and communicates to the rest of the crew, his blade emulating Al’s rhythm. He needs to be the perfect follower and responsive to Al’s catch and drives. He’s testing Buff, but Buff is on the ball. Al focuses on the movement of his legs, it’s a leg sport, not an arm sport. What they want is limbs, bodies and blades perfectly synchronised, moving like clockwork. Each of the crew should be at a different point of the stroke, giving the image a hypnotic wave-like movement.

‘Walk all over them,’ Beano calls and Al knows that they must be approaching the crew.

All of a sudden Al can tell by the movement of the boat and how they’re taking off that he’s in synch with his crew, and he remembers that even though he’s essentially leading, this is not about him. They couldn’t do this without him but it couldn’t be done without any single member of this crew. Moving together in this way right now is a deeper experience. For Al, they are and always have been a support network and he needs them now more than ever. He feels them on his side, rooting for him as they’re rooting for themselves.

Al, Walter and Tara were a three-person boat, he sees now that that wasn’t healthy, it couldn’t and didn’t end well. They tipped him overboard, the ultimate humiliation. He lost trust in people. And today, in this moment, it’s a value that’s returning.

‘Hold them off! Make it hurt!’

He pushes and they push with him, he hears Buff groan behind him.

They push over the finish line as the leaders, and family members and loved ones from the side celebrate.

‘Easy,’ Beano says, calling an end to the race so that they know when to ease up on the pressure. ‘Check it down.’

They bury their blades to bring the shell to a stop as quickly as possible.

Al’s legs are burning, his lungs are burning, the lads are cheering. He feels pats and punches, hears their rejoicing. The loneliness and sadness of the past six weeks, maybe more, are a stark contrast to this miraculous moment. He never thought he’d feel like this again. He starts crying.

‘We’ve got your back, man, we’ve got your back,’ Buff says.

‘I almost swallowed my own balls there,’ Brick announces, breathless.

Mick leans over the side of the boat and vomits into the river.

‘Morning sickness?’ Eddie asks and they all roar laughing.

‘Let’s get to the pub for these free pints,’ Beano says, with a wink to Al.

24

Melody

Belinda’s home is a cottage in the Waterford countryside. There’s more garden than there is house, a wrap-around allotment that’s a delight to hares, foxes, butterflies and bees. Bird boxes, a few hens for her daily organic eggs. The camper van is gone from the driveway, it was almost bigger than the house; a gaping hole where Derek used to be. It makes Melody feel sad, which confuses her because she still saw Derek as an interloper: a stranger who arrived into her peaceful feminine home and made her feel uncomfortable.

Melody had never lived with a man before, so Derek’s arrival in their home when she was a teenager unnerved her. Not because he was creepy, no he was anything but, he was a kind man, thoughtful enough to stay out of her way though he made it clear he wasn’t going to be pushed out of his new house or changed. It was his maleness that she needed to get used to: the sounds and smells that were so distinctly male.

Women are quiet. They do things quietly. They bend and fold, shape themselves around people, they are hospitable and adaptable. They mostly think of others first, themselves second – or at least are supposed to be genetically designed that way. They are aware of their sounds, the effect they have, the energy they leave, the first impression and the lasting effect. They consider. They mop their footprints up behind them as they go. Men are reared to leave their marks. They plant their flags and they pound their chests. They do what they need to do for themselves first. Needs must. Derek was a noisy nose-blower. The act was so loud it would wake Melody in the morning. His sneezes were aggressive and he expelled more air through his mouth than his nostrils, resulting in yells. In the morning the radio was loud, echoing, the cupboards banging, the cups and saucers clinking, placed down without thought for others who could hear. Even how he turned the pages of his newspaper was aggressive. The sudden rustle and snap ruffled her. And at fifteen years of age she was already irritable, everything pretty much annoyed her and felt unfair.

Before Derek moved in, she had been used to having the house to herself when her mum was out or at work but suddenly retired Derek was there. Even if he stayed out of her way she could hear him. The guttural throat-clearing, the heavy steps, the whistling. And the smells. She hated sharing a bathroom. His Derek man stuff, though neatly ordered in the corner away from hers, knowing to give even her personal items space. Dark brown bottles, razors and tubes. Tampons and sanitary towels were confined to the deep dark cupboards, not because he wanted this but because fifteen-year-old Melody did. She would go whole days without saying hi, or only saying hi. Avoiding his eye so that they wouldn’t converse. Ignoring him became a full-time job. Pretending he wasn’t there became all-consuming.

Belinda and Derek both gave Melody room and space to adjust to the change but everything felt gross and different, the house had changed and it didn’t feel like it was her home anymore. It wasn’t the people, it was the smells and sounds that pushed her out. She left at sixteen years old, failing to finish school, and moved to London to live with her dad.

The one thing she did like about Derek was his record player. Melody had never seen one before and it took over the storage unit in the living room, his record player, its speakers and his vinyl collection. Because Melody didn’t have her own collection she listened to Derek’s music. Belinda was a rock fan, punk rock, hard rock, folk rock on calmer days, but Derek’s was so very different. He loved synth pop. Watching the record spin was as much a part of the experience as listening to it and Melody loved when he was out so that she could play his music and sit watching it hypnotically spin. She never scratched his records, she was always respectful to his collection. She would dust them down, wipe them, she even organised his collection alphabetically. It truly was the introduction to her deeper music-loving experience. Some noises, she could take.

She pushes open the red gate and Bitsy, Belinda’s Jack Russell, appears at the top of the couch at the window, going berserk.

Belinda comes round the side of the house, in a floral dress, with a polo neck beneath, and a gardening apron, mucky gloves on her hands.

‘Love!’ she says, lighting up.

‘Surprise,’ Melody says, relieved that her presence has been received well. ‘I just popped by because we have the food truck in the whiskey festival.’ She hadn’t told her she was visiting because she worried Belinda would have told her not to.