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By Root 2145 0

way over the rocks in the village direction. I could see the spray from the increasingly wild waves thrown up from the sea’s edge in a rainbow, and the droplets were reaching me in a fine rain. I slithered into a long cleft, a secret place I had discovered earlier, where the tall rocks made a deep V-shape. Part of the floor of the cleft was occupied by a narrow pool, the other part by a rivulet of pebbles. The smooth rocks were very hot and the warmth in the enclosed space comforted my body. I sat down on the pebbles. I turned some of them over. They were damp underneath. I sat still and tried to silence my mind. A pebble came rolling down the rock into my rivulet and I looked at it idly. A moment or two later another pebble rolled down. Then another. I looked up. A head, framed by two clinging hands, gazed down on me from the crest above. A tendril or two of frizzy brown hair, tugged by the wind, had also come over the top of the rock. Two bright light-brown eyes peered short-sightedly down at me, half laughing, half afraid.

‘Lizzie!’

Lizzie levered herself up onto the sharp rocky crest, got one brown leg, already grazed and bleeding slightly, over the top, then, impeded by the full skirt of her blue dress, swung the other leg over, lost her balance and slid down the long smooth surface into the pool.

‘Oh, Lizzie!’

I pulled her out and hugged her, laughing with that agonized laughter which is so close to a mixture of wild exasperation and tears.

Now Lizzie, laughing too, was squeezing out the wet hem of her dress.

‘You’ve cut yourself.’

‘It’s nothing.’

‘You’ve lost a shoe.’

‘It’s in the pool. Can I have that one, or are you collecting my shoes? Oh Charles—you don’t mind my coming?’

‘You know Gilbert’s here?’

‘Yes, he wrote to me, he couldn’t help boasting that he was staying with you.’

‘Did he ask you to come?’

‘No, no, I think he wanted to have you to himself. But I suddenly so much wanted to come and I thought, why not?’

‘You thought “why not”, did you, little Lizzie. Did you drive?’

‘No, I came by train, then taxi.’

‘Just as well. There soon won’t be any more parking space left out there. Come on inside and get dry. Don’t slip again, these rocks are tricky.’

I led her back towards the house, onto the lawn.

‘What are those stones?’

‘Oh just a sort of design someone’s making. You’re thinner.’

‘I’ve been slimming. Oh Charles—dear—are you all right?’

‘Why shouldn’t I be?’

‘Well, I don’t know—’

We went into the kitchen. ‘Here’s a towel.’ I was not going to enquire what vulgar impertinent travesty of the facts had been offered by Gilbert in his letter. The thought of how the story would be told would have tormented me if I had not had greater troubles.

Lizzie was wearing a peacock blue summer dress made out of some light bubbly material with a low V-neck and a wide skirt. She was indeed thinner. Her curling hair, wind-tangled, blown into long gingery corkscrews, strayed about on the brilliant blue collar. Her pale brown eyes, moist and shining with the wind, with tenderness, with relief, gazed up at me. She looked absurdly young, radioactive with vitality and unpredictable gaiety, while at the same time she looked at me so attentively, so humbly, like a dog reading his master’s tiniest movements. I could not help seeing how different this alert healthy being was from the heavy confused creature whom I had allowed to be carried away from my house veiled and silent. Yet love seeks its own ends and discerns, even invents, its own charms. If necessary I would have to explain this to Lizzie.

Lizzie, sitting on a chair, had thrown off her sandals and crossed one bare leg over the other, hitching up the wide trailing blue skirt, half darkened with sea water, and was drying one foot.

James came in and stopped amazed.

I said to him, ‘Another visitor. This is a theatre friend, Lizzie Scherer. This is a cousin of mine, James Arrowby.’

They said hello.

The front door bell jangled.

I ran out, already seeing Hartley on the step, wind-tormented, distraught, falling into my arms.

A man with a cap stood there.