One by Conrad Williams Page B

it against the grey when he returned. Both of them were breathing hard. Jane thought the years of slog on the seabed, fighting currents, might have improved his fitness, but he guessed his lungs must have been damaged to some degree.
They tripped and skidded across the tarmac and followed Nance along a B road past a battered grain merchant's. Its grounds were host to dozens of silos, all of which had been lopped like boiled eggs. Tons of grain had been swept by the wind into drifts against brick walls and the burnt black skeletons of lorries. Beyond that and the railway, the earth sloped towards the sea.
'Where the hell is she going?' Jane cried.
Chris didn't answer but Jane received a reply when they started to run past items of her clothing. Chris gathered them up in his arms. He was calling out to her, but she would not stop. By the time they reached the coast, a further three miles away, Jane thought maybe his heart would burst. His clothes squirmed against his body, a layer of sweat sandwiched between them.
They staggered across a bluff of volcanic rock and onto the beach proper. An immense flash of heat had turned it into opaque leaves of obsidian: black, dark green, firebrick red. Their boots chinked and clinked. The sea was a horrendous churning stew. Bodies rolled upon the surf. Far away to the horizon, when the waves allowed them to see, they could see huge tankers upended.
Nance was naked, standing at the edge of the black froth of the breakers. Her feet were bleeding but she didn't seem to notice. They approached her carefully. Chris said her name but she didn't turn around. Her hair was lashing around her face. They couldn't see her eyes.
'I'm going for a swim,' she said.
Jane said, 'Not a good idea.'
Chris touched her on the shoulder and retracted his hand quickly, as if he'd been burned. Jane saw his confusion. He didn't know how to deal with her. She was wild, you could see it in the sweat that swicked off her, creamy as that of a racehorse. It was in the tension of her muscles. Jane reached for her arm and she was hot iron. She pushed him away. Her body gleamed as if she too had been turned to glass in the furnace of the beach.
'Nance,' he said, trying to keep his voice low and calm but able to be overheard above the torment of the waves and the howl of the wind. 'Nance, look at the water. Look at the steam coming off it. Look at the bodies. You go in there and you won't come out again.' Jane had never seen the sea appear so impenetrable. It looked as though it wore a skin, shining and thick, that would need to be pierced before you could submerge yourself. It was the molten tar that ran off the roads into the gutters. There was no sense of depth. You couldn't see the shadow of bladderwrack within it, or of sand churned up from the bed.
Nance's body glittered with dust. She resembled an exotic dancer with sequinned flesh, pumped up and ready to do her shift at the pole. Her breath came quick and shallow. Jane took off his coat and put it around her shoulders. She didn't make any attempt to squirm away. She turned quickly, within the temporary circle of his arms, and pressed her body to his. He held her, conscious of Chris's incredulous expression. He wondered if he would say something. There was that strange feeling with Chris, that he was involved in some silly domestic game of one-upmanship. He had the slouched, downturned look of someone who is in a perpetual sulk about one thing or another. It was an insult to the people who had died to see him here now with the pilchard lip, deflated by Nance's need. He couldn't realise that it was directionless. If it had been the Yorkshire Ripper standing here, she'd have fallen into his arms instead.
Jane led Nance back up the beach, away from the sea. Chris followed, dragging his heels. Jane held Nance by the arms while Chris dressed her. She had slackened somewhat, but her eyes still ranged across the horizon. It reminded him of Treasure Island , a book that had