if no one else was awake, tiptoed downstairs and out the front door before the dog could bark, determined to know what it was like to be out in this, with no one else alive.
The air filtered into his throat like a prickly thistle, so raw and sharp it made him gasp. From upstairs, the white mist looked warm. The cold was intense until he started to walk, and then it was damp rather than freezing. He knew exactly where he was going, but he was not sure why, which seemed the way it was in this town. This was a different world, everything about it surreal.
He walked briskly. Gradually, the outlines of the seafront houses became less obscure; he could recognize the occasional front door and dripping leaves in windowboxes muted into pale shades by the mist. He crossed the road without looking left or right. No need; no sound, but he could see the beginnings of the pier. Even the noise of the wallowing sea was muted by the weight of the mist.
Henry liked that. He loved to be without barriers or walls; no sense of distances, nothing to close him in. The monument of the fisherman, melded gloriously with his fish and his boat, looked like a guardian of the gate.
Henry walked on. It was suitable weather to be on an edifice like the deck of a ship. Eyes adjusted to anything, to extremes of light as well as dark, and the more he looked and the less the damp air raked his throat, the more he could see. Sinister things, like the signs attached to the stubby little lampposts, black with white lettering. RISK OF DEATH. NO JUMPING. NO DIVING . There were less prominent signs on the bins attached below. Litter, please place here. Before you jump. A green umbrella and a picnic box lay abandoned on one of the benches.
He needed to see those fishing platforms which flanked the caff at the end. Needed to, needed to, needed. . . He remembered them from yesterday, thinking how much Dad would have liked all that, how he would have chatted to those ageless anglers who grinned and got out of the way, careful to look before they cast. He needed to see what it was really like. See if the mist made soft.
Looking over the locked gate which led to the platform on the left of the caff, he could see that the tide was far higher than when he had been here last. The slurry sea looked as if it was oiled beyond the breaking of a wave, smooth on the surface but churning and boiling beneath like some giant, artificially quiet, industrial-strength washing machine doing serious business and resenting interference.. The whole edifice was closer to the water than he remembered: the legs seemed shorter, the sea so close it splashed up through the broken boards.
He was close enough to see the dimensions and the mist was beginning to break up and swirl like spun sugar. The missing boards, visible by the gaps they made, like missing teeth in a mouth, were obvious in their absence, but none of the boards were uniform in size, any more than a canine to an incisor. As the mist cleared in a teasing way, and then rolled back in gorgeous wisps, wreathed around the iron rail he clutched for support, he could see that the floor of the platform was a patchwork of wooden boards, metal boards of different age and size and colour, replaced and repaired only as time and weather dictated. There was a sign: KEEP OUT .
How would an average five-year-old boy manage to slip through one of these gaps? The five-year-old boy he had once been himself could not have slipped through these gaps with any degree of ease; his skinny shoulders would get in the way even if his hips and fat tummy could make it. He would have to breathe and wriggle to go willingly, which was possible in the course of a game. You would do anything in the course of a game or a dare when you did not want to look a fool. Even so, it looked a struggle to wriggle like that, with the sea almost tickling the ankles and wood splinters but yes, a boy could do it. A boy was like an eel, with a skin immune to the
The air filtered into his throat like a prickly thistle, so raw and sharp it made him gasp. From upstairs, the white mist looked warm. The cold was intense until he started to walk, and then it was damp rather than freezing. He knew exactly where he was going, but he was not sure why, which seemed the way it was in this town. This was a different world, everything about it surreal.
He walked briskly. Gradually, the outlines of the seafront houses became less obscure; he could recognize the occasional front door and dripping leaves in windowboxes muted into pale shades by the mist. He crossed the road without looking left or right. No need; no sound, but he could see the beginnings of the pier. Even the noise of the wallowing sea was muted by the weight of the mist.
Henry liked that. He loved to be without barriers or walls; no sense of distances, nothing to close him in. The monument of the fisherman, melded gloriously with his fish and his boat, looked like a guardian of the gate.
Henry walked on. It was suitable weather to be on an edifice like the deck of a ship. Eyes adjusted to anything, to extremes of light as well as dark, and the more he looked and the less the damp air raked his throat, the more he could see. Sinister things, like the signs attached to the stubby little lampposts, black with white lettering. RISK OF DEATH. NO JUMPING. NO DIVING . There were less prominent signs on the bins attached below. Litter, please place here. Before you jump. A green umbrella and a picnic box lay abandoned on one of the benches.
He needed to see those fishing platforms which flanked the caff at the end. Needed to, needed to, needed. . . He remembered them from yesterday, thinking how much Dad would have liked all that, how he would have chatted to those ageless anglers who grinned and got out of the way, careful to look before they cast. He needed to see what it was really like. See if the mist made soft.
Looking over the locked gate which led to the platform on the left of the caff, he could see that the tide was far higher than when he had been here last. The slurry sea looked as if it was oiled beyond the breaking of a wave, smooth on the surface but churning and boiling beneath like some giant, artificially quiet, industrial-strength washing machine doing serious business and resenting interference.. The whole edifice was closer to the water than he remembered: the legs seemed shorter, the sea so close it splashed up through the broken boards.
He was close enough to see the dimensions and the mist was beginning to break up and swirl like spun sugar. The missing boards, visible by the gaps they made, like missing teeth in a mouth, were obvious in their absence, but none of the boards were uniform in size, any more than a canine to an incisor. As the mist cleared in a teasing way, and then rolled back in gorgeous wisps, wreathed around the iron rail he clutched for support, he could see that the floor of the platform was a patchwork of wooden boards, metal boards of different age and size and colour, replaced and repaired only as time and weather dictated. There was a sign: KEEP OUT .
How would an average five-year-old boy manage to slip through one of these gaps? The five-year-old boy he had once been himself could not have slipped through these gaps with any degree of ease; his skinny shoulders would get in the way even if his hips and fat tummy could make it. He would have to breathe and wriggle to go willingly, which was possible in the course of a game. You would do anything in the course of a game or a dare when you did not want to look a fool. Even so, it looked a struggle to wriggle like that, with the sea almost tickling the ankles and wood splinters but yes, a boy could do it. A boy was like an eel, with a skin immune to the
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