sheltered cove, you’d never have guessed there was any wind at all. Maisie, at this very moment, could have no idea of it. Soon, he would be in full view, silhouetted against the sky, from where she was sitting.
He shivered, hugged his brown, bony arms across his chest, and thought about giving up. Of turning round and slinking back the way he had come; of putting on his warm clothes again, left in a neat little pile at the top of the cliff path, waiting for him.
“Thought I’d take a little stroll,” he’d say to Maisie, in explanation of his absence, and she would accept it—not uncomplainingly , perhaps, but certainly without question. Well, there was nothing to question; not for one second had she taken that wild boast of his as anything but an idle joke.
There would be no disgrace in going back. No disgrace, that is, that anyone other than himself, in his own soul, would ever know about.
It had been a crazy idea, right from the start; on top of which, he was getting his death of cold.
Still, having come so far, it would be a pity not to go on to the end, stand on the end of the spit for a moment and look over: no harm in just having a look, and reliving, just once, those moments of terror, of ecstasy, of intensity of living, such as he had never known before or since.
*
It was all exactly the same. The icy wind, the awful distance of the green, crawling water far, far below; the same uncontrollable shrinking of the flesh from even the sight of so sheer a drop … and the same compulsive scanning of the shore, too, to make sure that Maisie was still there …
Yes, there she was, just as he had left her, facing right towards him. Without his glasses, which of course he had left with the pile of clothes, he couldn’t see the expression on her face or even the set of her shoulders—but he knew, well enough, the scorn that both would be expressing. Silly old fool, he has gone up there after all! Wallowing in sentiment and nostalgia—I might have guessed it! Living in the past again, dreaming futile, old man’s dreams about the days when he really could dive …
I’ ll show her! hethought. It’ll be the last thing I shall ever do, but, my God, I’ll show her!
“Look, Maisie, look!” he yelled into the wind, across the curving sea; and raising himself on his toes—yes, he could still do that much—he sprang.
Strange how the old skills came back, and came back instantly, without fumbling or unsureness. It was as if they had been patiently waiting all these years, deep within his body, poised in readiness through all the long, dull decades for just such a chance as this. Even as his feet left the rocky edge, he could feel every muscle, every nerve, springing into old familiar action, like old war-horses at the sound of a trumpet. They took his body in charge just as they used to do, and straight and taut and perfect he swooped towards the sea. Already, during those two swift seconds of his downward flight, he knew that he was going into a perfect dive. His head tucked well down between his outstretched arms, as the head of a high-diver needs to be, and with his eyes correctly closed, he did not see the green, bulging water rushing up to meet him, and yet the timing of his entry, once again, was flawless. He cut the surface clean as an arrow, and there was scarcely a splash, only a hugely widening circle of ripples, as his body went into the long, graceful parabola that would bring him, after many seconds, safe to the surface a dozen yards away.
*
He could hardly believe that he was still alive! Breathless, yes, as who would not be?—But what a marvellous kind of breathlessness!—how utterly, gloriously different from the sick, dreary kind of breathlessness that had assailed him in the corridor of the train that time! This was the breathlessness of Odysseus when the sea hurled him towards the crags of the Phæacian isle after two days and two nights of swimming; the breathlessness of Hector when the
He shivered, hugged his brown, bony arms across his chest, and thought about giving up. Of turning round and slinking back the way he had come; of putting on his warm clothes again, left in a neat little pile at the top of the cliff path, waiting for him.
“Thought I’d take a little stroll,” he’d say to Maisie, in explanation of his absence, and she would accept it—not uncomplainingly , perhaps, but certainly without question. Well, there was nothing to question; not for one second had she taken that wild boast of his as anything but an idle joke.
There would be no disgrace in going back. No disgrace, that is, that anyone other than himself, in his own soul, would ever know about.
It had been a crazy idea, right from the start; on top of which, he was getting his death of cold.
Still, having come so far, it would be a pity not to go on to the end, stand on the end of the spit for a moment and look over: no harm in just having a look, and reliving, just once, those moments of terror, of ecstasy, of intensity of living, such as he had never known before or since.
*
It was all exactly the same. The icy wind, the awful distance of the green, crawling water far, far below; the same uncontrollable shrinking of the flesh from even the sight of so sheer a drop … and the same compulsive scanning of the shore, too, to make sure that Maisie was still there …
Yes, there she was, just as he had left her, facing right towards him. Without his glasses, which of course he had left with the pile of clothes, he couldn’t see the expression on her face or even the set of her shoulders—but he knew, well enough, the scorn that both would be expressing. Silly old fool, he has gone up there after all! Wallowing in sentiment and nostalgia—I might have guessed it! Living in the past again, dreaming futile, old man’s dreams about the days when he really could dive …
I’ ll show her! hethought. It’ll be the last thing I shall ever do, but, my God, I’ll show her!
“Look, Maisie, look!” he yelled into the wind, across the curving sea; and raising himself on his toes—yes, he could still do that much—he sprang.
Strange how the old skills came back, and came back instantly, without fumbling or unsureness. It was as if they had been patiently waiting all these years, deep within his body, poised in readiness through all the long, dull decades for just such a chance as this. Even as his feet left the rocky edge, he could feel every muscle, every nerve, springing into old familiar action, like old war-horses at the sound of a trumpet. They took his body in charge just as they used to do, and straight and taut and perfect he swooped towards the sea. Already, during those two swift seconds of his downward flight, he knew that he was going into a perfect dive. His head tucked well down between his outstretched arms, as the head of a high-diver needs to be, and with his eyes correctly closed, he did not see the green, bulging water rushing up to meet him, and yet the timing of his entry, once again, was flawless. He cut the surface clean as an arrow, and there was scarcely a splash, only a hugely widening circle of ripples, as his body went into the long, graceful parabola that would bring him, after many seconds, safe to the surface a dozen yards away.
*
He could hardly believe that he was still alive! Breathless, yes, as who would not be?—But what a marvellous kind of breathlessness!—how utterly, gloriously different from the sick, dreary kind of breathlessness that had assailed him in the corridor of the train that time! This was the breathlessness of Odysseus when the sea hurled him towards the crags of the Phæacian isle after two days and two nights of swimming; the breathlessness of Hector when the
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