earth.
Licking icing off my fingers, I asked about our assault on the fort. I knew it would require an early start to hit the tide right. We didn’t want to fight a vicious current on top of everything else.
‘We won’t have long,’ Finn said, ‘but we might catch a glimpse of it.’ He seemed excited by the possibility, like a child, and I revelled in this unexpected show of enthusiasm.
We sat for a long time in the dark, watching the beam of a lighthouse flash, hypnotic and reassuring, accompanied by the toll of a buoy. The tide seemed particularly low tonight; the beach stretched far away from us and the waves lapped quietly in the distance. I guessed it had to do with the full moon.
‘Is it true that you can still hear bells under the sea?’ My question referred to the legend, popular at school, that the bells of the churches from the lost city could be heard on quiet summer nights. Naturally, I was convinced of the absurdity of such a notion.
‘Of course,’ Finn said, without turning his head.
I looked at him sideways to see if he was serious, but nothing in his face offered a clue. For the next half-hour, until the temperature dropped and drove us inside, we sat in silence. I listened as hard as I could for the magic, but heard nothing but the clang clang clang of a buoy.
17
The sound of Finn boiling water woke me at dawn. He wasn’t much for talking, especially at that hour, and wouldn’t answer any conversation I initiated. Like the hut, he warmed up slowly, and I had a feeling his habit of solitude had existed for so long that it surprised him every morning to find me asleep where his granny had once lain.
It occurred to me that I had been at boarding school for a good many more years than Finn had lived alone, so perhaps my social skills were a little on the odd side as well. Whenever I was at home, I watched my mother chat brightly over breakfast the way an anthropologist might note typical social behaviour of the human species.
I hated getting up in the cold, and slept buried up to my eyes in blankets, removing them only to wrap my hands round a warm cup of tea. Finn had added sugar to mine unprompted and I turned away to hide my flush of pleasure. I knew that if I waited in bed for him to build up the fire and perform his morning tasks, the hut would gradually fill with a kind of fuggy warmth, so I lay still, savouring the familiar sounds and postponing re-entry into full consciousness for as long as possible.
Nothing in my life so far compared with those first minutes of the day, half-sitting in bed, still swaddled in warmth and with no imperative to move, just staring out of the window as the first pale streaks ignited the sky. I watched boats chug slowly past the windows: fishing boats returning from a long night of work, sailing boats from the nearby estuary taking advantage of the favourable tide, little tugs on their way back to port. At night passenger ships twinkled on the horizon like stars, but the daylight made them invisible.
‘We’ll take the dinghy,’ Finn said over his shoulder, heading out of the door. Through the window I watched him go, watched his outline soften and blur as he disappeared into the morning haze. The world had not yet come into focus. Even the sound of the sea seemed muffled, as if heard from a long distance away. From where I sat it was nearly invisible, lost in a cloak of grey mist. I knew this moment of half-light wouldn’t last, that in less than an hour daylight would have burned off the fog and restored the shape of things.
When I finally dressed and joined him, he was outfitting the little boat for our expedition: a wooden mast and sail retrieved from the dunes, a long coiled rope, a tin for bailing, an anchor. The sun blazed down and I knew that my thick jersey would soon feel uncomfortably warm.
Finn hauled up the little sail, swung the boat into the wind and pointed to where he wanted me. I climbed in at the bow and with a push and a jolt we
Licking icing off my fingers, I asked about our assault on the fort. I knew it would require an early start to hit the tide right. We didn’t want to fight a vicious current on top of everything else.
‘We won’t have long,’ Finn said, ‘but we might catch a glimpse of it.’ He seemed excited by the possibility, like a child, and I revelled in this unexpected show of enthusiasm.
We sat for a long time in the dark, watching the beam of a lighthouse flash, hypnotic and reassuring, accompanied by the toll of a buoy. The tide seemed particularly low tonight; the beach stretched far away from us and the waves lapped quietly in the distance. I guessed it had to do with the full moon.
‘Is it true that you can still hear bells under the sea?’ My question referred to the legend, popular at school, that the bells of the churches from the lost city could be heard on quiet summer nights. Naturally, I was convinced of the absurdity of such a notion.
‘Of course,’ Finn said, without turning his head.
I looked at him sideways to see if he was serious, but nothing in his face offered a clue. For the next half-hour, until the temperature dropped and drove us inside, we sat in silence. I listened as hard as I could for the magic, but heard nothing but the clang clang clang of a buoy.
17
The sound of Finn boiling water woke me at dawn. He wasn’t much for talking, especially at that hour, and wouldn’t answer any conversation I initiated. Like the hut, he warmed up slowly, and I had a feeling his habit of solitude had existed for so long that it surprised him every morning to find me asleep where his granny had once lain.
It occurred to me that I had been at boarding school for a good many more years than Finn had lived alone, so perhaps my social skills were a little on the odd side as well. Whenever I was at home, I watched my mother chat brightly over breakfast the way an anthropologist might note typical social behaviour of the human species.
I hated getting up in the cold, and slept buried up to my eyes in blankets, removing them only to wrap my hands round a warm cup of tea. Finn had added sugar to mine unprompted and I turned away to hide my flush of pleasure. I knew that if I waited in bed for him to build up the fire and perform his morning tasks, the hut would gradually fill with a kind of fuggy warmth, so I lay still, savouring the familiar sounds and postponing re-entry into full consciousness for as long as possible.
Nothing in my life so far compared with those first minutes of the day, half-sitting in bed, still swaddled in warmth and with no imperative to move, just staring out of the window as the first pale streaks ignited the sky. I watched boats chug slowly past the windows: fishing boats returning from a long night of work, sailing boats from the nearby estuary taking advantage of the favourable tide, little tugs on their way back to port. At night passenger ships twinkled on the horizon like stars, but the daylight made them invisible.
‘We’ll take the dinghy,’ Finn said over his shoulder, heading out of the door. Through the window I watched him go, watched his outline soften and blur as he disappeared into the morning haze. The world had not yet come into focus. Even the sound of the sea seemed muffled, as if heard from a long distance away. From where I sat it was nearly invisible, lost in a cloak of grey mist. I knew this moment of half-light wouldn’t last, that in less than an hour daylight would have burned off the fog and restored the shape of things.
When I finally dressed and joined him, he was outfitting the little boat for our expedition: a wooden mast and sail retrieved from the dunes, a long coiled rope, a tin for bailing, an anchor. The sun blazed down and I knew that my thick jersey would soon feel uncomfortably warm.
Finn hauled up the little sail, swung the boat into the wind and pointed to where he wanted me. I climbed in at the bow and with a push and a jolt we
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