The Man from the Sea by Michael Innes Page B

long-distance swimmers are probably idiots.” The man from the sea produced his phonetically perfect laugh. “But I think you might want – well, an objective appraisal. Are you in a mess?”
    “You can see that I’m in a mess.”
    “Talked to anyone?”
    “No.”
    “You love the girl?”
    There was a silence. “Yes.” Incredulously, Cranston heard his own voice ring out the word. “Yes. I do.”
    “She turned you down?”
    “She turned me down. She had a right to, hadn’t she?” He spoke savagely. “As a matter of fact, she was horrified.”
    “My dear lad!” The man from the sea appeared to be soberly unbelieving. “You can’t mean horrified. It doesn’t make sense.”
    “It had to make sense – to me. There it was. I’d thought – I’d thought it might be all right. And there it was – a ghastly flop. It must have been the last way she was prepared to think of me. And yet it wasn’t…or I thought not.” Cranston stopped, aware of his own incoherence. “That gun shook me, I suppose. I’m crazy to tell you this.”
    “Did you ever think to make love to a girl before?”
    “No – I didn’t.”
    In the darkness the man from the sea laughed softly, so that Cranston felt his cheeks suddenly burn. “My dear boy, I won’t say of the virgin approach that it’s a terrible mistake. But it invites disasters – and it’s a matter of luck whether they turn out comic or tragic. You were utterly at sea. You hadn’t a clue. And you missed out whole volumes in folio.”
    “I don’t believe a healthy girl wants volumes in folio. But I expect I was” – Cranston hesitated – “clumsy enough.”
    “That was the whole thing.” The man from the sea spoke with unemphatic conviction. “Think about her here – about her tone to you – a few minutes ago.”
    “I can’t – I won’t.” It came from Cranston like a cry. “There can’t have been a mistake – a misunderstanding. There mustn’t. It would make it worse, far worse, unbearable.”
    “About the mother?”
    “Yes.” It took Cranston seconds to utter the word, and he did so tonelessly. “I turned cynical, vicious, crazy – and I went for her.”
    “What utter nonsense.”
    It was the man from the sea at his quietest, and it pulled Cranston up. “What do you mean? Do you think we haven’t – ? Do you think I’m boasting, telling some filthy lie?”
    “I think you’re flattering yourself.” The man from the sea was amused. “About that access, I mean, of vicious, cynical activity. You were thrown off balance and the mother seduced you. It came to no more than that. You’re about the age she goes for, I’d say. And if she virtually raped you from her own daughter – well, that was additional fun.” He paused. “You know all this. You possess an active intelligence which has certainly got you straight about it by this time.”
    “Do you think you’re being comforting?”
    “I certainly hope so.” The man from the sea sounded genuinely surprised. “It’s the first stage with a problem – isn’t it? – to get the terms of it clear. And yours is not a very complex problem, you know. Ten minutes has served to see it as it is. Now you work out the solution. I wish my own conundrum were as simple.”
    “You talk as if it was all science.”
    “Of course it’s all science. Anything in which the mind can establish causality is science – and nothing but science. And the solution of your problem is simple – as simple as a right-about turn.”
    “I just have to try again – and on some convenient future occasion tell Sally that once upon a time I was an ass?”
    “In essence – yes.” The man from the sea was still confident. “Of course, I’m not discounting emotional complications in what is itself an emotional matter. You must work out how to deal with them. Particularly the magical side.”
    “I don’t know what you mean.”
    “The really primitive response in your situation, I imagine, is a kind of