Submergence Read Free Page A

to the sea were demerara. The water’s edge was turbid and swirling with gravel and shells and seaweed. There must have been a storm. She felt the need to touch the Atlantic again. She pulled off her gloves, got down, and set her hands in it until they lost feeling. The depths of the oceans filled her working mind, but for that moment she was determined just to look at the play of wind on it and the gulls wheeling above it. She had come to see the sea, not the ocean.
    A log fire blazed in the reception. An ancient computer with an apricot badge sat unused behind the desk like a piece of treasure, a reminder of when computing machines were generously built and slow-witted and not taken for granted, and a statement of how the establishment endured through technological revolutions. A Christmas tree filled the hall beyond, decorated in the local style with dried flowers, glinting ornaments, and golden candles. She sipped clear hot tea while they conducted the formalities. She signed her name in a ledger with a fountain pen and was given a room key made of brass. A porter led her through the hall and smoking lounge to an old lift with the English word UP illuminated above the cage door. She asked to take the stairs. Her suite was at the back of the hotel on the second floor, as she hadrequested. There was a bedroom and a living room with a large silk Turcoman rug. It was a part of the hotel dating back to the days of the manor, the part where the ceiling beams had been soaked in milk for a year to harden them. The views were of the lawns, the pines, and the beach beyond. At night it was possible to see the lighthouse. There was a handwritten note on her bed stating that it was the third Sunday in Advent and by hotel tradition guests were invited to serve themselves lobster bisque and other foods in the hotel kitchen at no additional charge. The bisque was to be served from a blue and white Meissen bowl and the tables in the dining room set with gold cutlery. She put the note on her side table and undressed.
    The bath was antique and deep. The oils provided were expensive and aromatic. Half-submerged in the scalding waters she slipped in and out of sleep. She had planned to call her mother, but lightheadedness overcame her. She fell asleep on the bed in her bathrobe and woke to the dark and the steady burning fire. She turned on a light, attended her hair, and pulled on a dress. Before she could zip it up, she changed her mind. She took off the dress, put on pyjama trousers, a T-shirt and a cashmere sweater. She called room service and ordered the bisque, a potato salad and a bottle of white wine. Her research assistant and friend, Tom Maxwell, or Thumbs, had copied several films for her. She put the disc in the player and watched Ghostbusters . Thumbs said she would like the Sumerian connection. When the dinner came she poured a glass of the wine and turned off the film and went and smoked a cigarette on the balcony. It had begun to snow.

    There had been so many waiting places in his travelling life. His childhood had been different. It had been settled. He had grown up in northern England, where a river flowed into the North Sea. When thetide was at its lowest it was possible to wade across the river. There was a competition. You had to hold your nerve: for a few steps you were fully underwater.
    His family lived in a Regency house at the edge of the common. From his bedroom, he could descry a black mill whose sails turned only on the windiest days. They called it the satanic mill. The churchyards in the town were filled with seagulls and the air was briny when the wind blew from Denmark. If you climbed the minster in wintertime there was a view of the ice on the marshes and the North Sea raging beyond.
    Horses were true for him. To ride them was not to feel confinement in any way except in the facing forwards. He had ridden horses in the school holidays across the common to the sea and along the shore. He had joined the army