A Lovely Day to Die by Celia Fremlin

or their last, or whatever it might be. “No, dear, I can’t honestly say I recognise it, not at all. It’s all such a long time ago …”
    Was she really so indifferent to the happiness they had once shared? Did it mean nothing to her that they were revisiting, for the first and last time, the haunts of their youth?
    And at last, when their holiday was nearly at an end, Malcolm came to a decision. Tomorrow—their last day—he would take Maisie with him to Dead Man’s Rock. Take her, knitting and all—and make her remember.
    This wasn’t its real name; it was simply what the locals called it. It wasn’t a rock either, not really. It was a narrow headland, an outcrop of granite running about a hundred yards out into the water, and curved at the end, like the beak of a bird of prey. And it was at the very furthermost tip of this curious formation, where it dropped sheer, fifty feet or more, into the green water, that therestood—had always stood, as far back as living memory could trace—a worn and battered notice-board proclaiming:
    D ANGER . D O N OT D IVE
    B Y O RDER , S EACLIFFE U RBAN D ISTRICT C OUNCIL
    The trouble about such notices is, of course, that the sort of people who aren’t frightened of a fifty-foot dive into the heaving sea aren’t usually frightened of Urban District Council notices either; and so it did happen, every so often, that some bold spirit would defy the injunction and go off the perilous tip—sometimes for a dare, but more often for sheer joy in the danger, and in the triumph of achievement. And, as the grim little nickname of the place implied, some of these intrepid souls did indeed come to grief, either from choosing a time when the tide was too low, or from simple ignorance of the techniques for diving from such heights. By striking the water at the wrong angle you can break your back, or knock yourself unconscious; by tilting your head a little too high you can have the water cascading up your nose at forty miles an hour, into your sinus cavities and bursting through your eardrums.
    So the young men who ventured upon this feat did have to be careful; and most of them, happily, were so.
    It was in the little sandy cove sheltered by this headland and by the cliff behind that Malcolm and Maisie settled themselves on this, the last afternoon of their holiday. It was in this exact same spot, Malcolm remembered, looking out towards the curve of the bay, that they’d settled themselves that other afternoon all those years ago, rejoicing in the solitude and seclusion of the place, and in their cleverness in discovering it.
    Then, of course, Maisie hadn’t had her knitting. She had been lying spread out to the sun, wearing only her bathing dress. Even now, Malcolm could recall the slender, golden limbs, the delicate curve of the lashes over the eyes half-closed against the sun as she smiled up at him.
    “Do you remember,” he asked abruptly, “the afternoon I dived off Dead Man’s Rock?”
    For a moment, it seemed as if she had forgotten even this. Then, with a shrug:
    “So you did!” She gave a little laugh. “You were a right show-off in those days, weren’t you!”
    A show-off? Is that what he’d been? Well, of course he had. Though an enthusiastic amateur diver within the safety of public swimming-pools, where the top board is rarely much higher than sixteen feet, he’d never in a hundred years have dared to go off such a height as this, if Maisie hadn’t been there watching, open-mouthed and incredulous, breathless with admiration.
    It had been a beautiful dive: he had known it, he had felt it, even during the long moments of swooping through the air; and never, as long as he lived, would he forget the moment of surfacing in triumph; of swimming shorewards with long, leisurely strokes through the blue water; of coming striding out of the shallows, the bright drops spilling around him, and stepping ashore, like a god, into the arms of his love …
    “It was a silly thing