Finn
Very early in the morning of the Acclimatisation Day for the sailing course, Mum asked me if I’d like to go for another walk on the beach before breakfast. It was still dark, but we were both up because I hadn’t been able to sleep very well and then I’d been sick.
Mum came into my bedroom when she heard me trying to clean it up.
It was all over my sheets and it smelled really bad.
She asked me if she could take my temperature.
I said OK, because I was really hoping I did have a fever and then I wouldn’t be able to do the course because I’d officially be ill.
Mum would have to cancel her trip and stay in France and bring me Marmite sandwiches in bed (once the sheets had been washed) and that would make me feel better.
But she looked at the thermometer and said it was absolutely normal and that it must just be nerves. So I got dressed and then we went out of the gate and down the path through the dunes to the beach.
When we got to the broken-down fence beside the rocks at the end of the beach, we turned around and started walking back.
The moon was fading now and the sky was getting lighter, and we were walking back towards the house and our breakfasts and after that I would have to go with Dad to the harbour, so I didn’t feel quite so calm.
My stomach was empty, but it still gurgled and felt like there were waves churning around inside it.
‘You’re going to be fine this week, you know, Finn,’ Mum said.
The tone of her voice didn’t sound quite as certain about that as her words did though.
‘Dad will take good care of you. And you’re such a good dinghy sailor.
I think you’ll enjoy learning how to sail the bigger boat. Being part of a crew.’
‘I don’t think you should go on your writing course,’ I replied.
‘Oh Finn,’ she said, with a sort of sigh.
‘It will be good for me to have a few days away. It’s not for long.
And you know I’ve really been looking forward to it for a long time.
Besides, it’s time for Philly to go home to England and it’ll be good for her, as well, to have the company on the journey.
I’ll be back before you know it and then you can show me everything you’ve learned. ’
I started concentrating on counting the shells along the tideline again, in twos to be on the safe side, but Mum interrupted me when I got to 22.
‘It’s good for us all to face challenges in life, you know.
I feel nervous about my writing course, because everyone might think I’m not good enough or they might criticise my book.
But I know I need to do it, because I’ll learn a lot and it’ll make me a better writer.
I think you’ll learn a lot from the sailing course too.
And you know how much work Dad’s put into organising it.
I know you don’t like new things, but we both have to brave this week and give it a go.
Who knows, we might even make some new friends. ’
I don’t have Friends. But it reminded me of the Old Lady saying, ‘My friends call me Philly’, and I thought maybe she had become a Friend in a way after all, even though she’s about 80 years older than me.
I bent down to pick up a double clamshell and handed it to Mum because she likes collecting them and putting them in a big glass jar which she keeps on the side of the bath in our house back in Scotland.
‘Why, thank you, Finn,’ she said and her whole face became a smile, so I knew she was pleased.
She held up her right hand and did our starfish sign too.
‘I’ll keep this in my pocket when I’m away and it will remind me to be as brave as Philly was.
Her life story is pretty amazing, isn’t it?
I think we can both learn a lot about courage from her.
Imagine setting off in an aeroplane in the dead of night to go and deliver secret messages to that chateau!
It must have been terrifying, but she did it not just once but twice.
If she could do that, then you and I can do our courses this week, can’t we? ’
I decided not to point out that it had obviously not ended very well for Philly. I think I’m more likely to lose a leg or an arm or something on the sailing course than Mum is on her writing course, but I don’t really want it to happen to either one of us. So I just said, ‘Yes, she was very brave.’
Then we had come to the end of our walk and so we went back through the dunes to the house and put the breakfast things on the table.
I made a promise to myself to try to be as brave as a secret agent being dropped into enemy territory.
Actually, Enemy Territory is not a bad description for having to be on a boat with that other big kid. He is not a Friend.