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1

I don't know. I would rather not leave immediately after lunch, but there's no connection otherwise and however small a country England may be, it's ten times larger, seemingly, by train.

Geoffrey, who is about half my age, returns to the office beaming so much I think at first he's drunk. No, he says, he is just elated to be finally left in charge. Don't let it go to your head, I say, as we review the schedule for the week and the various uses of the keys. But my sternness produces little effect. The greater responsibility has addled him. I should have asked Christine. She's slightly more mature. But she isn't paid enough, or so she often reminds me. Still, she can manage Geoffrey, if not the business.

"I'll remember," he says, skipping to make the keys collide.
"If you don't deposit it, there'll be nothing to cover the cheque."
"I'll remember." (Take them off him, quick.)"I'll need those back." A boy, he pouts.
"I want you to pay attention. Where's the appointments book?"
"On my desk. Oh, I'll remember."
"If there's any change to be made, don't let them come all on the same day - You'll remember the cheques?"
"I'll remember, I said," he says. "And the keys?"
"Later," I say, palming them.

2

I didn't expect him or her to accompany me to the station. There is something strange about their cheerfulness. Something repellent.

"We bought you this," he says." It was her idea."

Christine says, "It's a new kind of soap. Smell it."

I don't particularly want to. "Linseed?"

He nudges her. "Didn't I tell you?"

"It's for the bath. You could even wash your hair with it."
"Watch out," he says. "You're getting personal."
"It's new," she repeats. A poor speller.
"Keep him in line," I say.
"Don't you dare lose those keys!" she says, rehearsing. A void for names.
"When's your train?" he asks.

I wave them off and for twelve minutes I am alone on the roofless platform, a pair of shorts in a paper bag rubbed between my hands.

3

I stow bag and suitcase on the rack above my seat. I am about to remove my raincoat when there's a rapping on the carriage door. I lower the window. Geoffrey looks up at me with that drunken expression.

"You forgot the keys!" he says. "I had to run all the way back!"
"Look in your pocket."

He has a good many pockets. "They're not there."

"If I get off, it's sure to start. You know damned well I gave them to you!"
"They're not there." He jumps up and down. "I would have heard."
"Who's this?"
"It's all right," Christine says. "I have them. You must have put them in my purse. He ran so fast I couldn't stop him. Look," - every size, every cut on a hoop - "here they are." He laughs because she does. "We'll get it together," she says, "you'll see."

I see their young eyes gleam.

"Goodbye!" she shouts.
"So long!" from him.

I had a book in my hand. A box of soap.

But we've started.

4

The frame of the seat cracks. Will the train fall apart?

"Every morning," the man opposite says, "I fry an onion."
"You like onions?" the woman beside me asks him.
"Can't stand them."

She stretches the fingers on one hand.

"I never grow a straight nail," she says.

Two hours of this. Not a beam of sunshine. And the land as flat as the sole of my shoe.

5

"Even a seaside town has its wrong streets," Fay declared, a hundred and forty miles behind me, the month before, when I phoned my aged aunts.
"It's not a street we're after!" Beth shouted. "It's a good solid house for the seven of us!"
"Eight. If you count him."
"I thought," I said, "she was on the extension."
"We've put them in the same room. She doesn't trust me."

Beth laughed. "If you write to the agent now, we'll have our pick of the week."

"It's a bit late even so," I said.
"The quietest," Beth said, "and the coolest."
"Is one of you ill, then?"
"No." "Not quite."
"Are you sure this is the best man to write to?"
"Would you prefer we left it all in your hands? As we did last year?"
"That was a mess," I admitted.
"Well, then?"
"With a view, I'll say."
"With running water."
"There's our three minutes," Fay said, for ending.

6

"My hands used to be that smooth it was embarrassing," the woman says.
"I've got some nuts here," he says. "In a little tin. Want some?"
"There's fat in nuts, isn't there?"
"There's oil, I suppose. Do you know what leeks are?"
"Ask any boat."

The blind won't draw. The sash is always falling down. I left my glasses in my suitcase.

Find them?

7

"I've no father," he says. "To speak of."
"I've an aunt," she assures him. "Once a year."
"Not wrong about your hands."

Another hour. The same page.

8

Green suit, how odd you look outdoors.

At the station, there is no one to meet me, not Beth or Fay or Marvin, my uncle, not even my mother.

Never mind the shingle by the turnstile, Mackle isn't really a town on its own. The farthest reach of Hemmsmouth, the resort, it's simply where most of the rental villas are. The boarding houses (which none of us has ever been willing to try) and the two two-star hotels alone overlook the boardwalk, the unencumbered sand, the stone pier dividing the harbour. Mackle, however, sits in a kind of valley created by the dunes; the villas with the best views, on the other side of the valley, are not for rent. The building the taxi comes to a halt in front of surprises me, then, only for being so gloomy. The stucco front, flour-white in the agent's photo, has turned a cakey brown. The path to the door is littered with cinders. I can hear familiar voices from around the back.

"Done it again."
"Now, Fay!" Mother cries, pushing me under the elbow. "He's just arrived."
"I'm not stopping him sitting down, am I? But Lord, he's got to be told." Fay seems calmest when she's angry, the glint in her eye too easily mistaken for good humour. "Last year it was a hill like a mountain we had to climb. This year three roads to cross - "
"One's a laneway."
"Three, I said! We've come here to bathe, mind. Not to be run over. Three times going. And three times back."
"Your aunt," Mother whispers with her usual sweet redundancy, "has already been to the beach."

The villa and its outbuildings, presumably a garage and a potting shed, enclose a dark paved courtyard, where, I now see, just about everyone has gathered. Marvin rises from a kitchen chair, dressed, as I am, in a too warm suit. He motions to the low table in the centre. Biscuits, sandwiches, and cups.

"It's all right," he says.

Fay snorts and says it's a real dump, have I seen inside? No, I say, I came straight out.

"Good of you. I hope you like your room. We don't ours."
"I'd better," Grandad says. "I'm sharing it."

Mother bends, touches his knees.

"You're all right, though, Dad, aren't you? No complaints?"
"Doesn't mean I won't have." He shuts both eyes. Did his best anyhow."
"Anyhow is right," Fay jeers. "That Beth's stuffing her face for sure." She makes fists at the kitchen window. "Hey, you, where's that tea?"
"The flies!" Beth shouts, her face isolated, enlarged.
"Where's that tea, girl?"

Marvin stands up again. "Be teed off herself if you keep that up. Better give her a hand" - he doesn't hurry - "or she'll heave it." He twists his hips, his back through the narrow doorway.

Who's missing? I wonder. The two boys. They have gone scouting for something better than tea to drink, Mother tells me.

"Don't mention her arm," she warns.

Marvin returns, empty-handed. "We made the sandwiches this morning. Still fresh?" Grandad's the first to bite one. His cheek rolls eloquently. "Don't answer."

Beth slips to her heel off the doorsill, a pot pulling to tremble her up bent left arm. Her right -

"No need to stare," she says. To me.
"He's surprised, that's all," Mother says. "Three years running."
"Not the same cast ... he's not thinking it's the same cast."
"But it is the same arm!" Marvin says.
"You get a rise out of that, don't you?" Not to him but to me.
"Is it late?" I ask. "Too late to go down, I mean."
"The water'll be too cold."
"Just to see. For the walk."
"I hope," Fay says, "this piece of jade's got another set of clothes."

Mother says, "Put on your holiday gear. We'll wait."

"Let me know," Fay calls after me, "what you think of the view!"

Even Mother laughs.

9

There is only dark to see in by the window. It's the room directly above the kitchen. Here, on the view of sloping earth, sprawling bodies, I hang my suit.

"Wrong streets," says Fay.

She has opened her sandwich and is pulling off the crusts, Marvin - his foreshortened neck twice folded - reaching out for them. Beth, with a spoony smile, is dipping an empty teapot (Grandad's finger on the lid) into an empty (it may be a too full) cup.

Mother says, "I hear the bottles."

"They had nothing but ginger ale!" Tim and Will, the same height at the grassy gate, are both kneeing the latch, swinging the plastic bags in each hand.
"That's all right by me," Fay says. "We thought you'd been run over."
"Place is dead - No cars," my young cousins say.

But Beth is glaring. "Is he never coming down?"

10

Fay points, mirthfully, when I do. Mother thinks she's defending me by suggesting how expensive my sandals must have been. Marvin makes an all but inaudible remark about army shorts. I'm not sure how well my golf shirt passes, but this is what I wear, I say, when I'm reading the Sunday papers on my balcony at home.

"Are we going some place?" asks Will, watching everyone move toward the open gate.
"Haven't you grown, though?" Tim says cheekily, thumbing my waistband.
"To the beach, I thought," whines Grandad. "Come on, you lot!"

11

Beth says, "This is where I sprain my ankle."

The stones are wet and gritty. We have come across a black dog on the way down, and she is holding us all at bay with her yelping. "Go on, mutt!" Marvin gestures with his wide little hand. "She's the one who's frightened," Tim says, squatting. "Here, girl. And hungry," he adds. Will tosses a piece of sandwich between her paws.

"I feel rain," says Beth, turning from Marvin's arm.
"It's clearing," Grandad tells us. "Come on."

12

The cobbles brighten. (Our new friend's fur glows blue off the hind legs.) Not a drizzle now but a thin sea mist starts us blinking.

13

"Down here," Fay says, and Beth cries, "They're too steep!"

And yet she climbs down the sandy wooden stairs, Marvin beating the railing behind her.

"The weight of the cast," Mother says. "It must throw her off balance."
"I've noticed."

She looks at me. "We have to get along."

"Now, Beth," Marvin says. "If you don't want a mouthful of that water -"

14

Water drives its pearly mile-long crack over the reddish grey sand. The beach is not hard, the heaps will - and do - break. There's Beth, strangely bending her knees.

"Far enough," she pants. "Far?"
"Where else would we go?" asks Grandad, whose feet are sunk, heel first. Shoes between elbow and ribs, he lifts his hair, spoils his parting.

The sunset doubles us with its colours.

15

A scattering of red grains as I turn my socks inside out and drop them under the night table, where they form a knot. I recall that shape appearing, in another room, on the long pillow of our bed. I watched it move then, as Evie (phobic, squealing, "Get off!") twisted, one knee up, round and round in the corner, hands on face and hair. A great velvety moth, trapped, untrappable.

"He can't," Fay says, below, in the courtyard.
"The window's open," Marvin says.

I tried to capture it between my palms. It wouldn't be caught, bumped lampshade and water jug to reach the wall.

"He can't hear us."
"All that way on the one train." Mother, inconsequently.
"Pale enough. See him climb those stairs?" Beth, quizzically.

I clambered over the bed, a one-legged leaning Peter Pan, all scoop, with my slipper extended. Come, be caught, there's no more wall. You're caught.

"His dad wasn't bald, was he?" Marvin to Mother,
"Never lost a hair."
"It's the worry." Kind Fay,
"A rest? Here?" Unkind Beth.

No movement inside the slipper: I'd bent the toe forward to stop the heel. "Is it gone?" Evie asked, her eyes remounted on the backs of her hands.

"A bad girl," Beth says.
"A nice girl!" Mother replies.
"Let's not argue," Marvin says.
"She didn't know what he was like."

I shook my wrist over the windowsill, but the slipper would not be emptied, the moth be freed.

"Didn't choose to!" Beth says. "Christmas three, four years ago, remember?"
"I've still got that picture," Mother says.
"Not of me?"
"You're in it."

The same watch always tilted to the several lights of their final cigarettes. Then, that other time, I poked the black spot and off it -

"I say he can. Look, he's closing his window."
"Oh, let him. Silly to whisper."

16

The old man is too long at his prayers. I turn the book over as if that would clear my eyes. What a shadow he throws.

I ask him if he needs help. He rouses himself. He was dozing on his knees. I cross his shadow with mine to slide hand underarm.

"Don't know why you can't recite them lying down."
"I was thinking about your father and the next thing I..."
"I'm switching off the lamp," I say, getting into the other bed.
"Finished your book, then?"
"I'll finish it tomorrow. I'll do nothing else until I have."
"Every year you say that."
"Not believe me?"
"Yes, I do. Every year" - in the dark - "I do."

17

The book is Constant's Adolphe, a school text of Evie's I somehow came to be storing, her pretty handwriting in the margins ("Ellénore knows T*** wants Ad. to leave her") a curiosity now, a distraction ("examines his conscious"). Conscience, she meant. Means.

18

"It's the rain," Marvin says, coming out, the third one (as I'm the fourth) to use the toilet. "What time is it?"
"Just after three."

We hear a second plastery drop nearby.

Marvin shakes his head. "Whose room is that?"

"Don't know. Not mine."
"Not mine either. I'll sit on the stairs and have a smoke," he says, but when I myself come out he's gone.

My mother whispers, "I thought I heard thunder."

"Old plumbing."
"Does it not flush properly?"
"More a gurgle."
"Grandad asleep?"

The unshaded bulb in the wall is too strong to be looked at. The threads of her hairnet shine.

"Sound," I reply, and she closes the door.

19

Adolphe seduces Ellénore, persuades her to leave her children and her protector (M. de P***) behind. And why? For vanity is why. And then he finds himself burdened with this much older woman whom he can no longer truthfully say he loves. And yet he cannot abandon her, is happy neither in her presence nor apart. It is up to Ellénore to acknowledge that his love for her has long since sputtered out. She dies of grief. He lives on, with newfound regret.

I know how it ends. Evie told me.

20

"That's our hamper," I say. "Help me carry it?" Grandad takes the other handle and pulls away. "Together! Together! Less tiring."
"I see," he says, "you've brought your book. But where's the grub?"
"Put it down a minute. No one else is ready."

No one else is standing in the courtyard, comparing blue sky with cloud. The rain has soaked right through the stucco. Little wonder it is peeling, we say. The others are standing inside, shoulder to shoulder at the kitchen table.

"Finished with the jam? Here, Fay, let's do the knives and forks first, love."
"We could eat most of this with our fingers."
"There's nowhere to wash down there, remember."
"There's the water!"
"Don't think that's clean, do you?"

21

"Right, then. Who's feeling strong?" says Marvin.

Not Grandad and I, who struggle to carry between us the weight of two towels, a blanket, a bottle of sunning oil, and the compact yellow block of an old French novel.

Beth kicks at the edge of the doormat. "Where have you hidden the key?"

22

I make a hollow in the soft wet sand with my bottom. For my bottom. Sand soft, wet, and brightest at water's edge where Fay and Beth walk arm in unbroken arm. Their feet are bare and orange-soled, their faces dark beneath the brims of identical yellow straw hats. Cigarette smoke (they are all smokers) is returned sharply on the breeze.

Marvin and Will, their legs encrusted, are playing cards, the latter (the loser, often penniless) putting a red, glistening hand to the staff of the umbrella to straighten it, so that at noon (or so, for once unanimous, we judge) it stands upright and the shadow it casts is perfectly round, that of the fringe trembling above my mother's mouth and the runny ice she holds on a stick there, crossing, as I turn my own encrusted knees, the forty-eighth and -ninth pages of the book.("10 years with him; P. trusts her entirely.")

Grandad and Tim stand in the surf, the one folding open his high paper hat, the other pulling smaller the knots of his handkerchief.

Would they come and eat? Fay asks. ("They're not past," she whispers to my mother, "peeing in the water.") Marvin growls, unscrews the thermos.

"There's the ferry now," he says.
"I'll stay behind," I say.

My mother is anxious. "I thought you liked the ride."

"I'm staying, too," Grandad says. "I need to sleep. The noise you people made last night!"

Brown eggs, unshelled, are as white as the bread, the milk, the cottage cheese. The tea, lukewarm, tastes oily. The plums deflate at the first bite, wetting our chins and then our wrists. The smoke (again the smoke) pushes back the smokers' tongues, as if entering, with all else, their mouths.

23

It is half past two. The ferry, that nub on the horizon, is headed nowhere, merely cruising up and down the coast; it will be out of sight for less than an hour.

Grandad is reclining on a legless chaise, his feet and ankles covered with mud and newspaper. I listen to his breathing as I adjust the umbrella. Like the wind between the dunes, his exhalations are sometimes forceful, sometimes forced.

24

Dune Flora, 1923, a watercolour by Paul Klee. We had a reproduction of that in the corner, above the telephone. Evie didn't care for it especially, but she humoured me, most likely because, while we were living in my parents' basement apartment, nothing could truly be said to belong to us. Nothing that was to her liking. It was all to be disowned: the two desks, the green brocade sofa bed, the curving grey couch (which Beth had donated), the mixed collection of books (too many books, she complained).We'd chosen none of it freely, as a couple. I did think, though, that we could make additions, perhaps even begin to acquire the things we both wanted. Hence the Klee print, which I hoped she would warm to. But why would she? It had no associations for her, whereas for me it held (ambiguously enough) every holiday I had taken since I was eight.

In it, the dunes' curves are indicated only by the position of the strokes depicting grasses or flora - and that despite the obscuring screen of dozens of small rectangles of colour: yellow, green, brown, and - clustered more toward the centre - purple and red. There may be a meaning to this arrangement, some kind of macular regeneration, a bedazzlement by sunlight. But what I see, what I put there, is simply my account in life: each year that I spent the holidays with my parents made them happy. I behaved just as they assumed I would. I urged Evie to do likewise. To add another rectangle.

25

These dunes are nothing like those in the watercolour: the sand here is lighter, browner, than on the beach, and the grass is a yellowy green. I can remember running up and down, in and out, following my own tracks, my mother usually, my father sometimes, appearing suddenly from behind some hillock and catching me by the arm. The game was over as soon as it had begun. Later, on the same paths, Evie and I would play at being lovers, hiding from the aunts, etc., quarrelling about when we should go home. Could go home. I can picture her staggering away from me, clumsy in my old tennis shoes, her arms crossed to tighten the fit of her cardigan, her cotton print skirt pressed by the wind against her legs. She is saying something over her shoulder, something I don't wish to hear.

26

Adolphe feigns love. He is 26, Ellénore 36 (not that much older, I think). His own words overpower him, his loving guise is so convincing. He is self-intoxicated, self-seduced. During the next three years, he continually winds himself up to break off the liaison and then, at the last moment, (page 110: "always, always") loses his nerve. His candor gives her pain - her pain forces him to dissimulate. When (page 117: "at long last!!!") she encourages the attentions of other men, he believes for some time that this coquetry of hers may bring about his freedom. Then he begins to wonder whether, in behaving so, she isn't seeking to make him jealous (page 118: "conceit?"). He could leave her now. Everyone would approve. She might well be said to have forced him to. And yet (page 119: "conceit??"), wasn't she still in love with him? Wasn't he a hypocrite to seize on such a pretext? - You have no idea of the harm you do me, she says, but you will, one day.

27

I loved Evie for a few months. We were together six years. What she felt toward me has never been quite as easy to summarize. Most of her energy went into puzzling it out for herself, making me exist where - not so unAdolphe-like - I was inclined to disappear. Finally, we reached an agreement - we were living in our own place by then, the upper two floors of a house - and I moved out, with my desk and my books (and, inadvertently, a few of hers). Evie, how frugal, held onto the sectional couch but soon discarded the sofa bed. It weighed, she explained, a ton.

28

Grandad is sitting up, scanning the Channel.

"They wouldn't have gone to France, would they?"
"No, they're out there, somewhere." I point in the direction of Torquay.
"Your father went to France," he says.

29

My father left my mother shortly after Evie and I divorced. Mother joked about it, said I'd set him a very bad example - or Evie had, she didn't know which. Nor did she know where he'd gone. We never have found out. France? Ireland is more likely. Or Saudi Arabia.

Poor Mother, too bitter to look for comfort. Too distrustful. I shouldn't have stayed behind today.

30

It is all done by letters. Adolphe tells his father's friend and proxy, M de T***, that he will separate from Ellénore forthwith, but has to write to him three days later to confess that he can't, not yet (page 128: "always the promise, never the action"). There are a thousand reasons for postponement. Even so, he says, he is still determined and to such a degree that from now on his ties to Ellénore may be considered permanently severed. Released from anxiety for awhile, he wants to be gentler, more tender with her, if only to ensure some pleasant memories (page 130: "why bother?"). But one night Ellénore succumbs to a terrible fever, precipitated, he is told, by the delivery of a letter - two letters, really: the one from M de T***enclosing his own, in which he unmistakably renounced her. She becomes delirious. Despite some occasional rallying, she grows steadily worse. Finally - how to describe what he suffered during these three long hours? (page 135: "what about Ellénore's many years?") - she dies. He goes through her papers, among them the letter (written before her illness) that she had begged him not to read but to destroy. He reads it and learns how well she knew him. Why, she asks, did he, the unloving one, not find the strength to leave her? What bizarre form of pity prevented him, forcing him instead to stay with her and increase her unhappiness?

31

Evie went to a conference in Pennsylvania that summer. A hiking and hot-tub kind of gathering for marriage counsellors. I don't know whether she slept with anyone while she was there, but when she came back, she said (I can't remember which) either that she hadn't realized how unhappy she was or that she hadn't realized how happy she could be. This, after we had been attempting to make love for half an hour. We lay side by side, sweating, catching our breaths, looking up at the several folds in the sloping ceiling. She had to say something, she said. She thought we should separate. It wasn't bad news, to her or to me, but it was surprising. I'd always thought that I would be the one to take the initiative, self-hatred eventually doing what my small fund of courage hadn't done. And now here was Evie being brave for the two of us. This may have been the most cheerful moment in our life together. So cheerful we even attempted to make love again, but it was no use.

32

"They must have got off at the pier," I say, pointing toward Hemmsmouth.
"It won't be Marvin that got seasick," Grandad says.
"My money's on Beth."
"That'd be a safe bet, all right. Like last time. She's always doing the same thing. Over and over."

We watch the others draw near, the two boys, elevated by the glaze on the sand, running ahead, as small, still, as the gulls they alarm.