Walcot. Brian Aldiss

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       1

       Barefoot

      At high tide, the sea lapped close to the dunes, leaving little sand to be seen. The remaining sand above the high tide mark was as fine as sifted salt. Spikes of marram grass grew from it like quills from a porcupine. No stones were visible. The small waves, white and grey, seethed against their limits. How lonely it was, this wild coastline.

      When the tides began their retreat, they revealed first a line of pebbles, grey and black. The pebbles gleamed like jewels until the sun dried them, when they became as grey and inert as if they had grown rapidly old and died. Occasionally among the stones lay a small, dead crab, its up-turned belly the respectable white of death.

      The pulse of the sea appeared to quicken; its faltering waves had left the slopes of the beach and were now retreating over level territory. Venturing down to follow this august daily event, you found your feet sinking into the wet sand, and so you kept moving. The sand squelched with every step you took, turned pale, went dark. Went slurp.

      Stretches newly revealed were bare, immaculate, except perhaps for that baby crab, soft to the touch as you bent down to it. What caused it to die? Did crabs become ill?

      Everything about you shone with a joyous newness.

      The small ripples of waves as they rolled back towards their mother sea were transparent, and consequently looked as golden as the sand beneath them. They were so beautiful it was essential to pat them with bare feet, to jump up and down in them, splashing.

      So you followed this grand revanche, as if you, too, were determined to get back into the real sea. You were hopping about in a world of ceaseless movement; these waves, or very similar waves, would never stop, would still be rolling back and forth in their interplay with the beach for eternity, or until you grew up, whichever time was the nearer. You felt very close to eternity because everything here was marvellous, and in this year before the nineteen-thirties had dawned, you had the entire beach all to yourself.

      Look to left, look to right. Along the great expanses of beach, not a single person was to be seen.

      All through that slumbrous summer you were there, playing on the sands. And in those bygone summers the sun shone always overhead, undeterred by cloud. The sun was there when you arrived on the dunes in the morning, pausing and taking in the whole wonderful spectacle, and when you departed in the late afternoon; at that time, the red ball of it was only just beginning to slope down towards those dunes.

      The retreating waves swirled about a fishing boat. It was Mr North’s boat, anchored on the sand. Mr North, rowing strongly, went out in it at night, when you were in bed asleep, with your arms about your golliwog. The sea eroded a bowl in the sand round the stern of the boat before retreating further, to leave the craft high and dry, a perch for the odd seagull.

      At last the wavelets left the dunes as far away as possible. Their strength exhausted, they sank back into the embrace of the sea. The sea made little fuss as it swallowed them. This was the enchanted, the bronze, the salty and sublime, the interminable and august month of August, when everything is in compliance. The blue morning sky overhead was occasionally flecked with ribs of thin cloud, into which the sun was as yet still climbing.

      Every day was calm and hot, in both reality and memory.

      Very distant were the dunes, shallow as the breasts of an adolescent girl. They were perhaps half a mile from the lip of the sea. The sea was perceived as friendly, luxurious, playful, puppyish. You wore only a bathing costume and a round, grey, felt hat. You were completely solitary. You were able to exercise your imagination, free from interference. One year, you had a small wooden boat, which went exploring and survived many hazards.

      On that stretch of fresh sand, firmer now, baked to the brown of the crust of one of your mother’s pies, what adventures could be had! This was a newly discovered land, yours alone. It was the beginning of the world on which as yet no plant could grow, no animal would tread.

      And there were rivers on this new-found land, miniature Amazons which wound towards the sea, sometimes deep, sometimes shallow, delta-like. They carved cliffs an inch high in the damp sand as they went. A spade, a wooden spade, could deflect some of their tributaries.

      The sea, in its munificence, had also left behind, to punctuate this generous plain of sand, pools of various shapes and sizes. The sun glinted on them, spilling diamonds and daggers. You could lie in these pools; they were warm baths, more luxurious than any man-made bath. Little fishes were trapped here. Shrimps would come and tickle your toes. Sometimes you splashed, but never made much noise. You were in a secret, far-away land, where it was polite to be silent. You were encompassed, though, by a great shell of sound, sung by the sea in its conversation with itself; this was the resonant music of your happiness – though you were frequently unaware of it, or even of the fact that you were happy.

      To either side of you the beaches stretched hazily into the distance, to Happisburgh in one direction, to Bacton in the other. No one was to be seen, even as far as all the way to where the view СКАЧАТЬ