had been holding on to his breath, clenching it within his chest so that his lungs and muscles ached. Now, in releasing it all, something else was released too, leaving him oddly exhilarated.
The bay was small. It was not far to the point, awkward to reach and quickly filled by the tide. Few came here, summer or winter. He began to follow the line of the water and then for a moment or two, as if opening a door and peering through the narrowest crack, he allowed himself to think glancingly of the future. But it was impenetrable to him, and bewildering. It was the utter change that would change him so that he would no longer know himself. His life had been defined by his work in that place, and his own place in it, and, before it, by the other hospitals, other patients’ lives and deaths. He had had no other reason or being since the day that the news of his mother’s death had come to him.
He had been married. His wife lay at home now, in the bed at the other side of the room from his own empty bed. He had made a careful decision to marry her, needing a solid background to his life. He had liked her and she had loved him and so would be entirely content with what he was able to offer – a situation, a home, a measure of company. Fairness. Openness over money. And nothing whatsoever of himself. He remained inner, privateand inviolate, and never within the reach of another person. For the woman asleep, quietly alone, it had not been a bad bargain, though perhaps now she felt the colder winds of age she would have welcomed the warmth and protection of a greater closeness. But nothing was said, nor would it be. There was simply an understanding.
He liked to feel the firmness of the sand, yet with the slight yielding when he lifted his foot. As he walked towards the point in the silken darkness, his body fell into a rhythm, and then his anxieties quieted and dropped away. And into the stillness and silence that were left to him came other thoughts, which flowed through him like a slow-moving river through caves. They came not formed into words, but as images only. He saw the permanence of rocks and the earth’s strata, and sensed sudden, huge molten upheavals that happened without warning, and faults and cracks. Then there was the sky and the shiftingness of clouds, and the sea, turning, turning, endlessly renewing itself. The pebbles dragged back, mumbling at the seething water’s edge. The whole world seemed to be within his head and he viewed it there. He thought of flesh and blood and bone, atoms forming and re-forming, saw human bodies, the same from birth to death, and yet not the same in any way, changed utterly as the atoms reassembled.
When it was like this, he seemed to be on the brink of some simple, vivid comprehension of things, as in a dream when all is explained, all made clear, only to dissolve into paleness and confusion with the return of consciousness. Such times contented him. The fact that there were no answers to his questions, no resolutions to the workings of his thoughts, had long ceased to trouble him. Rocks. Sea. Stones. Atoms. Flesh. The flicker of brightness that was intelligent life. Raw, relentless misery. The stone-like state of death, that permanence that became in itself the final dissolution. He turned to them, as others would to invisible holy things, for sustenance and strength, reassurance and a kind of comfort.
He reached the point and rounded it, and then, the darkness of the whole wide shore beyond was huge as a mouth, to consumehim if he stepped into it. He did not. He turned and began to walk calmly back, contained within the circle of cliff, and the moon rode, beautiful above him.
Eleven
The smell in the cold hall was the smell of a childless house, and the silence was the same and oppressed him. Dust never settled. When anything was put down on the polished chest, it remained exactly so.
The air was deathly still, and his own feet made no sound on the thick pile of the
The bay was small. It was not far to the point, awkward to reach and quickly filled by the tide. Few came here, summer or winter. He began to follow the line of the water and then for a moment or two, as if opening a door and peering through the narrowest crack, he allowed himself to think glancingly of the future. But it was impenetrable to him, and bewildering. It was the utter change that would change him so that he would no longer know himself. His life had been defined by his work in that place, and his own place in it, and, before it, by the other hospitals, other patients’ lives and deaths. He had had no other reason or being since the day that the news of his mother’s death had come to him.
He had been married. His wife lay at home now, in the bed at the other side of the room from his own empty bed. He had made a careful decision to marry her, needing a solid background to his life. He had liked her and she had loved him and so would be entirely content with what he was able to offer – a situation, a home, a measure of company. Fairness. Openness over money. And nothing whatsoever of himself. He remained inner, privateand inviolate, and never within the reach of another person. For the woman asleep, quietly alone, it had not been a bad bargain, though perhaps now she felt the colder winds of age she would have welcomed the warmth and protection of a greater closeness. But nothing was said, nor would it be. There was simply an understanding.
He liked to feel the firmness of the sand, yet with the slight yielding when he lifted his foot. As he walked towards the point in the silken darkness, his body fell into a rhythm, and then his anxieties quieted and dropped away. And into the stillness and silence that were left to him came other thoughts, which flowed through him like a slow-moving river through caves. They came not formed into words, but as images only. He saw the permanence of rocks and the earth’s strata, and sensed sudden, huge molten upheavals that happened without warning, and faults and cracks. Then there was the sky and the shiftingness of clouds, and the sea, turning, turning, endlessly renewing itself. The pebbles dragged back, mumbling at the seething water’s edge. The whole world seemed to be within his head and he viewed it there. He thought of flesh and blood and bone, atoms forming and re-forming, saw human bodies, the same from birth to death, and yet not the same in any way, changed utterly as the atoms reassembled.
When it was like this, he seemed to be on the brink of some simple, vivid comprehension of things, as in a dream when all is explained, all made clear, only to dissolve into paleness and confusion with the return of consciousness. Such times contented him. The fact that there were no answers to his questions, no resolutions to the workings of his thoughts, had long ceased to trouble him. Rocks. Sea. Stones. Atoms. Flesh. The flicker of brightness that was intelligent life. Raw, relentless misery. The stone-like state of death, that permanence that became in itself the final dissolution. He turned to them, as others would to invisible holy things, for sustenance and strength, reassurance and a kind of comfort.
He reached the point and rounded it, and then, the darkness of the whole wide shore beyond was huge as a mouth, to consumehim if he stepped into it. He did not. He turned and began to walk calmly back, contained within the circle of cliff, and the moon rode, beautiful above him.
Eleven
The smell in the cold hall was the smell of a childless house, and the silence was the same and oppressed him. Dust never settled. When anything was put down on the polished chest, it remained exactly so.
The air was deathly still, and his own feet made no sound on the thick pile of the
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