The bow dipped into the trough, nosing into the next sea as they bent their backs into the stroke. The dory rose and fell, clearing the wave as it crested, shipping less water this time. None the next. The surf line receding behind them.
He saw it first in his father’s eyes, a cloud of confusion that also furrowed his brow. A moment later, he felt it beneath the boat, a building swell that should have dropped away. But didn’t, it just kept on coming, surging up from below. His father gripped the gunwales, the confusion in his eyes now replaced by the unmistakable glare of fear. And Conrad turned.
A wall of water already making up about eight feet reared up behind Antton, a glassy ridge, deep green in color, shutting out the ocean beyond. And he could recall his sense of indignation. It had no place being here, no right.
‘Eyes in the boat!’ screamed his father.
Conrad yanked on the oars as he turned back, fear running through his arms now, and his starboard oar popped clear of its oarlock.
Later, he would spend endless hours reliving the next few moments, clinging to the fractured memories, replaying them in his mind, refiguring them: both his oars in the water this time, that instant of hesitation written out, along with the moment he committed the cardinal error known to all surfmen, the moment he turned to look at the ocean.
He would try to factor in the words of consolation from those who actually saw that freak sea, that rogue wave which had started life hundreds, thousands of miles away, and which only found some meaning to its existence in its dying moments off the ocean beach. They said they’d never seen the like before, they said no crew on the beach would have cleared that wave, they said popping an oar had made no difference to the outcome.
The dory was near-vertical when Antton leapt clear, passing by Conrad’s right shoulder. Conrad released the oars and made to follow him, but he was too late. The dory, snatched up in the curl, pitchpoled backwards, stem over stern, upended with such force and speed that Conrad had no time to set himself for the impact with the water. He hit it face on while still drawing breath.
He spun and twisted in the darkness beneath the upturned boat, lunging for a hold. He seized what must have been the thwart, but it was wrenched from his grasp as the wave powered on inexorably towards the beach. Something struck Conrad a blow in the side of the head: a limb, an arm or a leg belonging to his father. He pawed helplessly, trying to latch on, but it was past him now, leaving him tumbling in its wake, all sense of orientation gone.
He felt a line whip past him and he clutched at it. It was the cod trawl, unraveling from one of the tubs. It offered no purchase, though; it simply began to wrap itself around him, the barbed and baited hooks at the end of the little snood lines catching in his oilskins, binding him up tight.
That’s when he felt the downward drag—the weight of the water filling his waders—and he knew then that he was done for. Even if he hadn’t been ensnared by the trawl, it was too late to kick them off. And as he sank away, his lungs gave up the fight, allowing the ocean to flood in.
There was no tunnel, no shining light to guide his path. Nor was there any pain. Only blackness, sudden and absolute.
The Kemp crew was fishing just to the east, and it was Rollo—relegated to the beach as always—who was first to arrive on the scene. He pulled Conrad’s father, unconscious but alive, from beneath the dory and dragged him up beyond the wash. Seeing that the other rescuers were still some distance off, stumbling along the shore, Rollo stripped off his oilskins and his waders and struck out through the breakers. It was a foolhardy thing to do, suicidal even—he must have known that just as well as the next man—yet he managed to snatch at some lines of cod trawl before being driven back by the cold and the surf.
So it was that Rollo hauled Conrad’s lifeless body from the ocean, reeling him in, hand over hand, oblivious to the hooks tearing at his bare hands, his flesh. He later claimed that he’d only done as his grandfather, Cap’n Josh, had once instructed him: forcing the drowned man’s knees to his chest and bearing down hard on his midriff.
Conrad came to, the last of the water convulsing from his lungs, to find Rollo’s blurred face filling his field of vision.
‘Hello,’ said Rollo through chattering teeth, while rubbing Conrad furiously with his hands.
It soon became clear that Antton was lost. They searched for his body, handlining with grappling hooks, setting gill nets straight offshore and hauling seine. At midday the swell picked up again, dangerously so, and even Conrad’s father was obliged to concede defeat.
Conrad was warming himself at Doc Meadows’ hearth, nursing a mug of steaming broth, Maude at his side, when his father showed up. That’s when Conrad saw the look, the one that said more than any words: ‘You were to blame.’
It was a fleeting moment, and the question of Conrad’s responsibility for the tragedy was never once voiced by his father. Indeed, he laid the blame squarely at the feet of that freak sea. But Conrad always knew what he believed in his heart, and it stood between them like a mountain range shrouded in mist.
Two services were held for Antton—one a memorial, the other a burial some three weeks later, when a few scraps washed ashore near Gurney’s Inn. During this period there was not one day when Conrad’s father didn’t walk the beach, searching for the remains of his firstborn son.
Close-knit as they were, the fishing families were hit hard by Antton’s death. But things picked up again, as they had to. Come May, when the first of the striped bass appeared and struck in at the beach, Conrad found himself hauling seine again, with Sam and Billy Ockham making up the rest of their crew.
Conrad’s father shrugged off his mantel of gloom. Conrad did his best to mimic the charade, but it was over a year before he was able to visit Antton’s grave, by which time the arguments for and against America’s entry into the war were on everyone’s lips. Pearl Harbor settled the matter. Conrad was drafted and ordered to report to Camp Upton at Yaphank. The day his parents saw him off at East Hampton railroad station he sensed it was the last time he’d ever see his father.
The letter from Maude arrived during his recuperation at Barton Hall in England. Conrad had recovered sufficiently in the eyes of his doctors to be allowed out from time to time, along with a couple of the other patients. He carried the letter with him on the bus to Norwich, opening it in the shady cool of the Cathedral cloister while his two companions prayed inside.
He felt curiously removed from the words on the page—the stomach pain, the diagnosis of cancer, his father’s sudden decline. Maude said she was putting the house on the market, but that she would deposit the greater part
