Usually this spectacle of jostling, over-exposed flesh, with its unsavoury bouquet of stale suntan lotion and sweat looking along the beach as it swept out to the distant cape, Peiham could almost see the festering corona, sustained in the air by the babble often thousand transistor radios, reverberating like a swarm of flies — would have sent him hurtling along the first inland highway at seventy miles an hour. But for some reason Pelham’s usual private distaste for the general public had evaporated. He felt strangely exhilarated by the presence of so many people (he had calculated that he could see over 50 thousand along the five-mile stretch of beach) and found himself unable to leave the terrace, although it was now 3 o’clock and neither he nor Mildred had eaten since breakfast. Once their corner seats were surrendered they would never regain them.
To himself he mused: ‘The ice-cream eaters on Echo beach…’ He played with the empty glass in front of him. Shreds of synthetic orange pulp clung to the sides, and a fly buzzed half-heartedly from one to another. The sea was flat and calm, an opaque grey disc, but a mile away a low surface mist lay over the water like vapour on a vat.
‘You look hot, Roger. Why don’t you go in for a swim?’
‘I may. You know, it’s a curious thing, but of all the people here, not one is swimming.’
Mildred nodded in a bored way. A large passive woman, she seemed content merely to sit in the sunlight and read. Yet it was she who had first suggested that they drive out to the coast, and for once had suppressed her usual grumbles when they ran into the first heavy traffic jams and were forced to abandon the car and complete the remaining two miles on foot. Pelham had not seen her walk like that for ten years.
‘It is rather strange,’ she said. ‘But it’s not particularly warm.’
‘I don’t agree.’ Pelham was about to continue when he suddenly stood up and looked over the rail at the beach. Halfway down the slope, parallel with the promenade, a continuous stream of people moved slowly along an informal right-of-way, shouldering past each other with fresh bottles of cola, lotion and ice-cream.
‘Roger, what’s the matter?’
‘Nothing… I thought I saw Sherrington.’ Pelham searched the beach, the moment of recognition lost.
‘You’re always seeing Sherrington. That’s the fourth time alone this afternoon. Do stop worrying.’
‘I’m not worrying. I can’t be certain, but I felt I saw him then.’
Reluctantly, Pelham sat down, edging his chair fractionally closer to the rail. Depite his mood of lethargy and vacuous boredom, an indefinable but distinct feeling of restlessness had preoccupied him all day. In some way associated with Sherrington’s presence on the beach, this uneasiness had been increasing steadily. The chances of Sherrington — with whom he shared an office in the Physiology Department at the University actually choosing this section of the beach were remote, and Pelham was not even sure why he was so convinced that Sherrington was there at all. Perhaps these illusory glimpses — all the more unlikely in view of Sherrington’s black beard and high severe face, his stooped long-legged walk — were simply projections of this underlying tension and his own peculiar dependence upon Sherrington.
However, this sense of uneasiness was not confined to himself. Although Mildred seemed immune, most of the people on the beach appeared to share this mood with Pelham. As the day progressed the continuous hubbub gave way to more sporadic chatter. Occasionally the noise would fall away altogether, and the great concourse, like an immense crowd waiting for the long-delayed start of some public spectacle, would sit up and stir impatiently. To Peiham, watching carefully from his vantage point over the beach, these ripples of restless activity, as everyone swayed forward in long undulations, were plainly indicated by the metallic glimmer of the thousands of portable radios moving in an oscillating wave. Each successive spasm, recurring at roughly half-hour intervals, seemed to take the crowd slightly nearer the sea.
Directly below the concrete edge of the terrace, among the mass of reclining figures, a large family group had formed a private enclosure. To one side of this, literally within reach of Pelham, the adolescent members of the family had dug their own nest, their sprawling angular bodies, in their damp abbreviated swimming suits, entwined in and out of each other like some curious annular animal. Well within earshot, despite the continuous background of noise from the beach and the distant fair-grounds, Pelham listened to their inane talk, following the thread of the radio commentaries as they switched aimlessly from one station to the next.
‘They’re about to launch another satellite,’ he told Mildred. ‘Echo XXII.’
‘Why do they bother?’ Mildred’s flat blue eyes surveyed the distant haze over the water. ‘I should have thought there were more than enough of them flying about already.’
