The Man from the Sea Read Free Page B

quite all right. Only something’s happened that rather ditches us for tonight. A man from the sea.”
    “A man from the sea?” She was bewildered.
    “Escaped from a ship – and swum ashore. That motorboat was after him. It’s gone. But the man’s on my hands still. He’s over there in the other rocks.”
    “What sort of a man? What’s it about?”
    He shook his head. “I don’t know. Smuggling, perhaps. I believe various up-to-date varieties exist.”
    “But how stupid!” Her confidence was returning. “He must go away. You must send him away.”
    “I don’t know if I can.” He hesitated. “And I want to know about him.”
    “But he has nothing to do with us! ” It came from her as if proving that he had said something strictly nonsensical. “Please, please, Dicky, go and get rid of him… I’ve only a little time. I must be going back.” Her voice had gone husky, and she moved in his arms – with calculation, some new perception told him, so that through the thick wool her skin slid beneath his fingers. “Or can’t we just slip away – into the field above the cliff?”
    “I’ve got to find out about him.” He saw that she was surprised as well as puzzled, and it came to him humiliatingly that here was the first indication she had ever received that he had a will of his own. He was prompted to add: “And get him clothes.”
    “But he may be a criminal!” Caryl was horrified. “And you would be breaking the law. Dicky – do, do let us clear out.”
    Cranston let go of her and stepped back. She was at least tolerably secure again on her own pins. “I don’t know that we could if we would. He’s keeping an eye on us, I suspect. And he’s prepared to make trouble if we don’t toe the line.”
    “Make trouble?”
    She was scared again – so that instinctively he put out a hand to her once more. “He’s an educated man, and nothing escapes him. He sees that we wouldn’t care for a lot of shouting.”
    “Why should we be afraid of it?” Abruptly, as if to enhance his sense of some horrible disintegration, she was spuriously bold – dramatic on a note that was wholly false. “I’d take it – with you, Dicky. I’d take anything with you. But I have to think of Sally.”
    It was the first time that she had spoken the name in weeks. He said very quietly: “Look – you can clear out. That will be the best thing, and at least it will cramp his style. Slip through the rocks to the cliff-path by the groyne. Then double back along the top to your bike and go home. I’ll stay and deal with the chap.”
    For a moment he could see her waver. When she spoke it was with a queer desperation. “No. Not unless you go too.”
    “But surely–” He stopped – having caught suddenly at a fantastic truth. In her incredible head Caryl had fudged up some crazy suspicion. Perhaps it was to the effect that he had been prompted to conceal a second mistress at the other end of the beach. More probably what had peered out in her was without definable content – a mere irresistible wash of undifferentiated sexual jealousy. And at this, under a sort of cold inner light flicked on by the absurd discovery, Cranston starkly realised the simple truth over whose contours his mind had been intermittently groping for days and nights. It was as if his fingers had slid beneath a delusively seductive garment and come on ice.
    He was crazy himself. For weeks he had been indulging in a bout of madness. A casual observer – and now there was one – would see in it no more than a run-of-the-mill indignity of late adolescence. But it wasn’t that. It wasn’t remotely just what one might feel elated about or ashamed of according to one’s mood. It was entirely different. He wondered if it was unwittingly that Caryl had touched the unbearable quick of the matter only a minute before…
    He caught himself up. Their situation demanded action and not reverie. Something prompted him to turn his glance back along the