A yellow-and-brown tin of KLIM powdered milk rolled in the seaweed at the bottom. He surfaced at last into the sunshine, spitting salt water, eyes burning.
When he looked around, he was briefly disoriented. The sea was blinding; the horizon seemed to have dissolved. The reliable buoy of the old man was gone, and the currents had pulled him thirty or forty yards. His fellow swimmer was heaving himself up the beach, his elderly girth now covered in a towelling robe.
A few of the fishermen looked past the old man to him, their eyes narrowing over their tins of tobacco. Water was something you tried to stay out of, their eyes said. Whoever you are, you’re a grown man and you’re bad luck, throwing yourself at the sea like that.
Somewhere in the Channel a boat blew its siren. At the end of the Pier, the anglers cast their lines and floats into the swell. He climbed the steep shelf of the beach as the automated music from the carousel started up in the distance, a dismal, tinny accompaniment to his exertions. He looked to the men at the dees, and looked away again only to see the two women sunbathers staring warily too, as if, in his stumbling preoccupation, he might at any moment intrude upon their privacy. He blinked in the strong light, trying to spot his chalet in thelong, monotonous row, and in that moment he felt lost, out of step, in a place as familiar to him as his own childhood.
They’d got it wrong, the fishermen. He wasn’t bad luck. It was worse than that. ‘ Precautions ,’ she’d whispered hoarsely. No precautions. She’d eased the rubber off and her eyes had dared him. It wasn’t just that another pregnancy could kill her. That was his fear, more than it was hers. Her stubbornness about the rubber was code for what she wouldn’t bring herself to say: that it was he, her husband – not the enemy – who had suddenly put her and Philip at risk. If the enemy landed, he’d leave them. It was a betrayal. An abandonment. What, her eyes had demanded, was the point of precautions now ?
Whatever her own private logic, it was between them, unspeakable, an oily dark thing, and it hardly mattered what actually came to pass. It hardly mattered if German barges appeared at this very moment, an ominous semaphore on the horizon, or if he and Evvie lay next to each other, safe in their bed for the next forty years. He had told her it was possible he would leave.
6
That morning, as his father turned south for the Bank, Philip cycled up the London Road, past the Co-op Department Store and Goodall’s Greengrocer; past the Cat and Dog’s Meat Shop, Jessop the Barber’s, the watch-repair shop, and the boot mender’s, the open door of which released the delicious smell of new leather. Behind him, a milkman’s barrow jingled with empties. At the tram stop, two Gypsies waved fistfuls of wildflowers. He bumped over the kerb, crossed the tram-rail and glided past Dr Baldwin’s surgery and Mrs Dowley of Dowley’s Fish ’n’ Chips, bending over, tipping yesterday’s chip fat down the drain and showing, by accident, the backs of her fat, fish-white legs. Then the gas fitter’s flashed past, the radio-set shop and the tinsmith’s window, where the morning light bounced off milk pails and cake tins.
At the corner, he made a sharp, wheel-juddering turn and heaved himself up the hill of the Old Shoreham Road. He stood tall on the pedals and wobbled up and up, through the colossal, catacombed darkness of the railway viaduct bridge. High above him, pigeons sat on the narrow ledges of the iron girders, immobile as toy ducks lined up in the shooting gallery on the Pier.
Orson’s brother, Hal, had been known as a damnfineshot. His hands, Orson claimed, always smelled of gunpowder. From the time he was just twelve years old, Hal had won every prize at the shootinggallery. Next he was made Squadron Leader in the school militia. Now he was a Second Lieutenant overseeing three rifle sections and two dozen men in France.
When he looked around, he was briefly disoriented. The sea was blinding; the horizon seemed to have dissolved. The reliable buoy of the old man was gone, and the currents had pulled him thirty or forty yards. His fellow swimmer was heaving himself up the beach, his elderly girth now covered in a towelling robe.
A few of the fishermen looked past the old man to him, their eyes narrowing over their tins of tobacco. Water was something you tried to stay out of, their eyes said. Whoever you are, you’re a grown man and you’re bad luck, throwing yourself at the sea like that.
Somewhere in the Channel a boat blew its siren. At the end of the Pier, the anglers cast their lines and floats into the swell. He climbed the steep shelf of the beach as the automated music from the carousel started up in the distance, a dismal, tinny accompaniment to his exertions. He looked to the men at the dees, and looked away again only to see the two women sunbathers staring warily too, as if, in his stumbling preoccupation, he might at any moment intrude upon their privacy. He blinked in the strong light, trying to spot his chalet in thelong, monotonous row, and in that moment he felt lost, out of step, in a place as familiar to him as his own childhood.
They’d got it wrong, the fishermen. He wasn’t bad luck. It was worse than that. ‘ Precautions ,’ she’d whispered hoarsely. No precautions. She’d eased the rubber off and her eyes had dared him. It wasn’t just that another pregnancy could kill her. That was his fear, more than it was hers. Her stubbornness about the rubber was code for what she wouldn’t bring herself to say: that it was he, her husband – not the enemy – who had suddenly put her and Philip at risk. If the enemy landed, he’d leave them. It was a betrayal. An abandonment. What, her eyes had demanded, was the point of precautions now ?
Whatever her own private logic, it was between them, unspeakable, an oily dark thing, and it hardly mattered what actually came to pass. It hardly mattered if German barges appeared at this very moment, an ominous semaphore on the horizon, or if he and Evvie lay next to each other, safe in their bed for the next forty years. He had told her it was possible he would leave.
6
That morning, as his father turned south for the Bank, Philip cycled up the London Road, past the Co-op Department Store and Goodall’s Greengrocer; past the Cat and Dog’s Meat Shop, Jessop the Barber’s, the watch-repair shop, and the boot mender’s, the open door of which released the delicious smell of new leather. Behind him, a milkman’s barrow jingled with empties. At the tram stop, two Gypsies waved fistfuls of wildflowers. He bumped over the kerb, crossed the tram-rail and glided past Dr Baldwin’s surgery and Mrs Dowley of Dowley’s Fish ’n’ Chips, bending over, tipping yesterday’s chip fat down the drain and showing, by accident, the backs of her fat, fish-white legs. Then the gas fitter’s flashed past, the radio-set shop and the tinsmith’s window, where the morning light bounced off milk pails and cake tins.
At the corner, he made a sharp, wheel-juddering turn and heaved himself up the hill of the Old Shoreham Road. He stood tall on the pedals and wobbled up and up, through the colossal, catacombed darkness of the railway viaduct bridge. High above him, pigeons sat on the narrow ledges of the iron girders, immobile as toy ducks lined up in the shooting gallery on the Pier.
Orson’s brother, Hal, had been known as a damnfineshot. His hands, Orson claimed, always smelled of gunpowder. From the time he was just twelve years old, Hal had won every prize at the shootinggallery. Next he was made Squadron Leader in the school militia. Now he was a Second Lieutenant overseeing three rifle sections and two dozen men in France.
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