In the first memorial regatta there was Scott who raced for his wife Marianne and John who remembered his daughter, Lilian. Sarah entered for her brother Daniel and Jacklyn for her lost fiancé Mark. William came for Jane, his wife and Joe remembered his little sister Katrina, like Tameka who raced in memory of her sister Shana. Then there was George. George remembered his beloved wife and partner for life and beyond, Catherine. George started it all.
Newport beach, isn’t like you’d imagine. There's the town, then the Regatta sign. The boats, the people and the race itself. If they hit a buoy then they yell a name—smiling, laughing, talking, crying—
That’s how George saw life and he saw grief the same way.
We stayed at the Doryman’s hotel on Newport Beach, an older establishment catering to families and couples on holiday from the U.K. The owners were a lovely older couple who understood the needs of a civilized person—they always had water at the ready for tea and she baked scones with clotted cream and jam each morning—if there was love left in his heart for anything it might be those scones.
They breakfasted together, Scott and George, before trekking down to the sandy beach with the masses once the sun was out and the wind died down. “I guess I’m not as popular as you—then again—I’m not exactly talking to anyone in the group—even though I know these people of all people would understand the lump of grief lodged permanently in my throat and leave me be,” Scott said.
Scott was a last minute addition to the group, a first year Newport regatta virgin, but George had come around to visit his flat only to discover him wallowing about unshaven, unwashed, unfed. He’d patched him up, fed him, pushed him into the shower and eventually got him back to work, but there was no heart in it, no soul inhabiting the body as it sat in the office each day.
All that might have been par-for-the-course in a man who just lost his wife to cancer, but Scott knew he ended up here because of the robe. It was Marianne’s old ratty pink robe, he’d been wearing it, sleeping in it, smelling it—he just needed to be close to her. The day George came to check on him he’d quickly taken it off and shoved it into the cushions of the duvet. Not quick enough or well enough to escape George’s eagle-eye notice though.
George had coddled and bullied him by turns into taking a holiday, getting away from the dreary rain and seeing a little of the world. All he knew ahead of time was the George was lending him a little boat for some event on the water he felt they should attend together. A Harrod’s bag shoved into his hands at the last minute revealed a tiny pair of red Speedos in the hotel room, which turned out to be the least racy wear at the regatta, but he didn’t know that then, he just wondered if George had finally lost his marbles.