Loss of Separation Read Online Free Page A

without thinking, the bowline without its mantra: the rabbit comes out of the hole...
    I put the string in my pocket and struck along the beach, eyes beaded against the stinging hiss. The wind blew the creases out of my clothes. I felt the urge to lean into it, like the gulls, and allow myself to be propped up by its muscle. I wasn't feeling it quite so much; moving against the wind was distracting me from the basic pain that lifting and planting my legs produced. It felt good, even though I knew my bones would be aching by the end of the day. I could bathe again. And I could finally take up Ruth on one of the massages she kept offering me.
    Shadows had shortened by the time I reached the harbour wall and I was feeling hungry. I decided to walk up to the abandoned mill and take a rest before trundling to the pub for lunch. I had reached the end of the harbour track, bypassing the gift shop and the boat repair centre, the land falling away to scrubby paths, razor wire and open fields, when I heard a call behind me. Charlie stepped out from one of the shacks and waved.
    'How's thems knots coming along then, kidder?' he asked, when he had caught up.
    I smiled at him. I liked Charlie. He had done as much for me, in his way, as Ruth had done with her intensive care.
    'Not too shabby,' I said. I tied him a bowline with my eyes shut. 'What's next?'
    'We'll get y'on to some decorative knots, maybe. Tricky stuff. Keep y'fingers busy. Tire 'em out. Where're y'off to?'
    'Just walking.'
    'Pushing too hard, chief,' he said. His sunblasted face was a fascinating map of seams and slots and wrinkles. 'Y'going to end up going backwards. Int there something about rest in this programme the doctors got y'on?'
    'I rest enough,' I said. 'I was on my back for six months.'
    He nodded, looked as though he might add something, and then hooked his thumb back in the direction of the harbour. 'I'm taking her out later,' he said. His boat, the Gratitude , was a stubby, bobbing mass of dull colour and portholes in the water. 'Goin fer sea bass. Come with? Get y'sea legs sorted.'
    I shook my head. It would be good to get out on the ocean, pull some of that air into my lungs, but I wasn't ready. I felt as though my life was being measured in terms of a bed, a bath and a fire under the pier. My roads didn't stretch beyond these things. Not yet.
    'I will, soon, thanks,' I said. 'But I don't know how much help I'll be.'
    He shook his head. His soft hair echoed the movement. 'Don't worry bout it. I've been doing this alone so long I forgot what the help is sposed to do anyway. Need some hooks baiting, though, if y'up to it.'
    We walked back towards Charlie's shack.
    'You saved me from getting muddy, at least,' I said, taking a last look back over my shoulder at the dun fields and the crippled mill. Charlie nodded and laughed and walked at my pace. He told me about sea bass. And he told me about Gordon, his son.
     
    Ruth made dinner. I sat at her kitchen table, sipping a Bloody Mary with way too much Worcestershire sauce and Tabasco, just the way I liked it. I smacked my lips and blew my cheeks out. Ruth made good Bloody Marys. She used celery salt and dry sherry and grated horseradish. It didn't matter how crummy the vodka was after that.
    I watched her waddle around the kitchen. She had jointed a chicken and was browning it off in a big pan of smoking oil. A heap of chopped vegetables sat on a board, waiting to be added to the cooking pot. I was hungry. For half a year of my life I had been nourished by injected fluids. I had vowed never to leave anything on my plate again. I nibbled on breadsticks and listened to the noises my body made.
    'Don't you miss London?' Ruth asked. I hadn't realised how long we had gone without saying anything. I was happy with the silence. It felt comfortable. Perhaps not for her.
    'I don't know,' I said. 'I don't feel as though I've had enough time away to come to any kind of decision. I'm just coming out of a sequence of giant