Poached Egg on Toast Read Online Free Page A

days of wind and was shining still on stray groups of swimmers up the coast, who had placed towels and blankets in shelter of the red cliffs. Close to shore, on dark sand that was lapped intermittently, a damselfly struggled on its side; its linear black body, its beaded head, had been crushed by some mishap of nature. Helen disturbed two sandpipers running side by side as she jumped through the waves, hearing Valerie’s screams. At first, the wind had kept them from her. Then, had brought them in a rush, flooding her ears. There was no thought in her mind as she flung herself through shallow surf, no thought but “Valerie! Valerie!” The sandpipers waited until she passed; they stood, immobile as herons, while the lash of a small wave overturned pebbles and created new eddies, which they probed hurriedly for a meal of sandcrabs. The sandpipers scurried up the shore, away from the people now running along the beach. The birds stopped, waited, and quickened their slender curved beaks to a rhythm slightly faster than the shadows of their prey.
    The old woman sat on a lawnchair at the top of the red cliff, her craggy face swept in the wind by threads of her own white hair. Long ago, in a spring-swollen pond, someone had drowned, a stone around the neck. She looked down on the scene below and saw the child floundering as she screamed, where the surf became higher, where breakers tossed her, like a rag.
    The sands were frantic with the activity of decay. With each large wave came other rippling, shallow waves, creating rivulets between humps of sand formed that day by sea and wind. Each movement set another in motion, causing water to trill over sandbars from three or four directions, crisscrossing, equalizing until every droplet rejoined the sea.
    Up from the waves, the sand had begun to dry but it was still packed and hardened. Sand fleas, patterned like flicking doilies, created circles around upturned washed-in skates whose flat fishy moulds seemed to be made of white rubber, their long tails extended behind. Towards the dunes, the sand was loose and pale; here, large crabs had been swept by earlier waves, or by wind, or had crawled out of the ocean, or had been dropped by gulls. Now, they lay on their backs, fleshy green-white undersides exposed, their bent legs loosened or strewn helter skelter about the sand.
    Helen was in deeper water now, the surf trying to pitch her back to shore. She swam, and the rhythm of her arms with each stroke cried, “Valerie! Valerie!” She had almost reached the child who, seeing her mother, began to try again; her weakened strokes brought her to Helen who pointed the child towards shore. Then, Helen gathered her strength and tried to follow.
    The old woman on the cliff nodded. She turned her head and faced flat open beach, unprotected by cliffs—where a man in black swimming trunks had run and was shouting for rope, for a boat, for rescue.
    Wind lifted the sand and drove it to sea; lifted it in fine visible manes that tossed their slithering traces. And then, the wind turned, came down from the north and raised the breakers until they were over Helen’s head by fifteen inches. The undertow began to suck at her legs, and fought with the surf for her body. Valerie had been caught up by shore waves and had finally reached safety. But the men who were halfway to Helen had to turn back. They crawled up onto the beach, exhausted by the new current that was tugging Helen out to sea. Her body was pushed towards shore by one wave, dragged out by the next. Valerie, the man in black swimming trunks helping, struggled to her feet on the beach, unaware that she had, mercifully, stepped on the thread-like neck of the damselfly. Its struggle ended, it now washed out to sea.
    On the beach, weed and dulse, sea lettuce and Irish moss had twisted and tangled during the three days of erratic relentless wind. Soft heaps of decay were gradually covered over, packed down. Whiskery tufts of weed clung to