Poached Egg on Toast Read Online Free Page B

half-opened mussels where slipper shells had attached themselves to the hard blue curves. Limpets stuck like Oriental hats to slipper shells. Under the waves, barnacles opened and froze like yawning molars as they were swept to shore. All suffered the pounding of wind. Lashing, lifting, stinging wind.
    The long grasses along the rise of the dunes bent, yielding, but did not release their grip beneath the sand. On top of the red cliffs, the soil was covered with dry stubble. In the curvatures below the edge, cliff swallows rested in chains of circular nests, watchful, waiting for early evening when they would crisscross one another’s flights like swooping bats.
    Thistles and hard close weeds grew then, from the top of the cliffs, grew under the chair of the old woman with the craggy face, back, back to soil which, still red, became lush and fertile. A bumblebee was thrown off course again and again in the changing wind—now from land, now from sea. The bee swerved crazily, flying low to the grass where the old woman looked down and out to the sea.
    The waves knocked at Helen’s head until she cried out in pain, “Stop!” They knocked at her as flashing lights danced before her eyes. She thought she saw Valerie in the big yellow towel, standing with the ring of people on shore, and she said to herself, “So many, staring at me.” But she closed her eyes and, when she opened them, tried to relieve the pain at the back of her head. Now, she was grateful that her vision had clouded and she could not see. She tried, though she could not, to move her neck so that she would hear the boat that would come from the side, to save her.
    The waves cracked and knocked at the foot of the cliff; there was no boat that day. The old woman on the cliff could have told them that; she could see in both directions all along the coast. The nearest boats had been pulled up high in the fishing village, and the wind had tightened the knots in the ropes that held them. The wind kept the fishermen muttering, their arms folded.
    Again and again, Helen’s toes tipped against a sandbar; then, she lost even that in the sway. The wind rode hard on the waves. Though she could not see them coming from behind, she knew the precise moment each would roll over her head. She held the rhythm now, of dying. She tried to close her mouth and she held her breath with each wave, thinking, “Not yet, not yet you won’t, not yet.” And felt and heard water gurgling in her throat. “I can’t hold on, but not yet,” she thought. She had stopped hoping that the boat would come. The shore could not be seen because of the cloud in her eyes. She felt for the sand with her toes again, and kept her arms at her sides when she could, to keep the heaviness from her shoulders. “I am drowning,” she allowed herself to say. “Valerie was turned back and if she is not wanted too, then she is safe on shore. I am drowning, and she is safe on shore.” And once more, she said, “Valerie, Valerie.”
    The old woman pointed to the ropes as the men ran up the path of the cliff. The men flung the ropes down to shore and tied them, even the clothesline that had been strung out beside the vacant barn at the end of the field. The knots jerked and held; clothespins and colourfully braided fishing ropes sailed on the waves, out and out, a child’s gay purple raft bobbing at the end. The men and women made a chain—two with the raft, one at each section of line. The old woman watched the wooden clothespins dip in and out of the sea.
    Zebra-striped wings of seabirds wagged saucily on currents of wind. Heavy casual gulls soared, crying
pit-a-tree pit-a-tree scree scree scree
. With this last cry they dived through frothy caps of the highest waves, ducking out again as the waves furled and reached for the softness of their necks.
    Helen lay on the beach and accepted the warmth of blankets and the bright yellow towel. She heard voices as men and women stooped over her. She was