The little bay disappointed him, packed with dull drift that choked the waves, a pocket for the storm’s mess, and on the headland they found the sea racing, but not with the explosion he had imagined up the cliffs side.
“Tide’s out.” So that formless bright patch of moon was still pulling the sea about, holding it off the land. Then she led him carefully to the edge, and he saw a hole in the clay, blue, raw and dripping from a wave’s mouth.
“That came out last night.”
Still the sky travelled, torn cloud and blue enough for trousers, rain-flaws, and air ribbons. The wildness enervated him. The excitement was cerebral, all spectacle, a whip-up for the eyes and the salt-refreshed palate, the ears cut off from common sounds.
At lunch words crossed his wind-filled head like the gull’s cry in the night. The well at the cottage on Tollerdown would be filling; floating corpses could be skimmed off: the vicar at Tunbarrow was reliable with the shipwrecked: Felix had gone over there.
While they relaxed over coffee, the boy came in, bareheaded, strapped into oilskins, pale, his cheeks burning with two red circles exercise would not account for.
“Eaten?” said his sister.
“I don’t want to. I’ve seen them.”
“Seen what?”
“Twenty-three dead men.” They all reacted to the young voice horror and drama made unsteady.
“Singularly drowned with their wounds shewing—where the fish gnawed—”
“Haven’t had time to be gnawed,” said Ross. “Don’t overdo it.”
“I saw them till they had no significance whatever, because I saw death. I suppose you admit they’re dead?”
“A death,” said Ross, coldly, “you court yourself in the cutter year in, year out. We court. What about it?”
Felix swallowed, and stared right and left.
“Death’s family party,” he said. “I’ve seen it. Getting nearer home. Don’t you know you’re in league with that sort of thing? And that your shifts for getting away are hopeless—”
“What shifts?” said his sister. “Ease up, boy, stop running round in circles. I didn’t drown them.”
He addressed himself to her:
“Your love affairs—what are they worth? and your famous strength that supports us? I know you’re a strong woman, with your stunt of opening doors every sane person knows are better shut. I’m your brother and you’ll not take me in. Twenty-three bodies, twenty-three pictures of death have taught me the worth of your tricks. And I don’t flatter myself I shall do anything on my own. You’ve sucked me too dry for that—”
Carston saw her swing the crystal slung from her neck he knew the boy had given her.
“Dearie,” said Picus, “let your back hair down, and be yourself.”
“Go away,” said Ross.
“Go and look for what you want where you think you’ll find it,” she said. Temperately, ineffectually, the reserve shewing how she loved him.
Carston wanted to kick him. Clarence yawned. The boy took no notice. Carston thought: ‘Ways of clearing the house. A full well at Tollerdown, and Biarritz the brighter by one cub.’ Whose adieux were being made separately.
“And Clarence can nurse his fancy heart-break and Picus his second-rate chic. And Ross make his appetites serve his art, or whichever way round he does it. And Carston get kick out of being taken in by our fake aristocracy. And Nanna slave and tell you how wonderful you are. I’m going where there won’t be any more fairy-stories, and my complexes can rot me or—”
“All right,” said his sister, “we’ll try not to overwork Nanna, or impose on Carston too much.”
‘Well, well,’ thought the latter: ‘the new type of child: Biarritz, bars.
“‘Portrait of the artist as young man,’” he said. “Good luck.”
But the boy answered:
“D’you fancy my sister so much that you’ve learned her tricks? She is keeping them for someone else than me, that’s all.”
She wondered as she left the room, and for once ordered Nanna to iron his linen immediately, if his version of the truth was refreshing him, as any contact should. And, pitifully, how long it would last. And anxiously, what he would do. And, maliciously until she felt better what sort of a fool he would make of himself, what gaping mouth would snap him up.
So he lost her until he should come to look for her, Grail vanished, girl and all.
