Doctor Who_ Deep Blue - Mark Morris [58]
‘Hmm,’ he said, managing to sound like the village idiot on a go-slow.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said playfully, ‘was I keeping you up?’
‘I was just... just... just thinking,’ he slurred. Then a slight frown crinkled his forehead. ‘What do you want?’
Part of her wanted to snap, ‘Oh, never mind!’, but it would be a shame to end the weekend on a sour note. I just wanted to tell you I love you,’ she said.
There was a pause as if he was waiting for more. Then he said, ‘Thanks. I love you too.’
She sighed, though not loud enough for him to hear, and they walked on. A couple of minutes later she said, ‘Do you know what’s strange?’
Again that slow reaction: ‘Hmm? What?’
‘It’s a boiling hot day and yet most of the people on this beach are covering themselves up. I wonder why.’
He shrugged as if he couldn’t see what she was getting at.
A few moments later he answered, ‘Maybe they don’t want to get sunburned.’
‘No, I don’t think it’s that.’ She frowned for a moment, lips pursed, then raised her eyebrows in a facial shrug. ‘Oh, what does it really matter? We’ll be home soon. This is just a peculiar place, that’s all.’
They were near the end of the beach now, most of the holidaymakers behind them. June began to relax a little, even though they would have to run the gauntlet again on their way back. A little further along the sand gave way to jutting rocks, seaweed-slimy rock pools and the silently howling mouths of cliff caves. There were few people around here. The whispering of the tide sounded like a secret that the sea would reveal only to them.
June stopped and looked out at the water, fascinated and soothed by the shifting mosaic of green, blue and grey, coins of golden sunlight bobbing and sparkling on the waves. Terry let his hand slip from hers and moved on slowly. He clambered up over the first of the rocks, stepped carefully around a few pools with his flip-flopped feet, and ambled aimlessly towards the nearest cave, a dark, vertical gash in the sun-drenched cliff.
June watched him go, then turned back to the sea, enjoying her moment of communion with it. If she hadn’t felt so nervous of her fellow human beings, she could have sat on a rock and gazed at it for hours, intermittently dozing, allowing the rhythmic liquid breath of the tide to transport her to another place.
Despite her state, the sea managed to weave its mesmerising magic. June was certain she had remained conscious as the sea’s never-ending patterns kaleidoscoped in front of her eyes, yet suddenly she was jerking not so much awake as aware, with no idea how long she had been standing there. She looked around, hoping to catch sight of Terry pottering among the rock-pools, but there was no sign of him. She almost called out but didn’t want to attract attention to herself.
He couldn’t be too far away. If she didn’t see him when she climbed up on to the rocks, she’d no doubt find him poking about in one of the caves, looking for interesting stuff that had been washed ashore by the tide. She sidestepped a great swathe of clear jelly at the base of the rocks and headed towards the caves.
The rocks were relatively dry, though the mossy seaweed that provided them with a furry green coat was still damp and slippery underfoot. As she stepped down from a jagged crest of rocks on to a relatively flat area, the nearby entrance to the first of the cliff caves gushed with light.
It was sunlight, of course. She must have looked at the cave at the exact moment that the sun inched far enough across the sky to flood the entrance and drown the shadows inside.
Not that the shadows had been hiding anything interesting.
The sand in the cave, still damp from the lack of sunlight to bake it dry, was strewn with bladderwrack, an old blue fishing net, pop bottles, driftwood and more blobs of the jelly-like stuff that the sea seemed to have coughed up like phlegm.
She walked past the cave and stopped outside the next one.
The entrance was four feet high at its apex and she had to crouch down to peer inside. There was nothing to see. The interior was no bigger than