Sea Change Read Online Free Page A

home now, and he smiles and says yes, let’s go. And as he holds her and nestles into her neck he hears Judy’s dead calm voice whisper Oh no, oh dear God no and Guy doesn’t even look, he just pushes Freya away, pushes her to get behind that tree, that great solid tree, Freya can run round that trunk all day - the horse is too frightened to keep this up for long, and Guy has his daughter safe behind that commanding oak, at least, when the stallion begins to face him a third time. When he turns to confront it he discovers he now has a stump of wood in his fist, it’s not a branch but it’s heavy. The block of wood has been by their feet all along, but only now he’s realized it’s in fact a pretty good weapon. He can use it like a brick to club the horse on the jaw. Maybe break a tooth, or he can try and jam the corner of the log into the eye. He’s capable of anything. He’s seen this animal up close, knows where the patches of skin might be softer. He’s earned an understanding of this danger, and a right to be cruel.
    Guy has made this fight his own now, and the stallion knows it too, preparing itself, its head swinging in small movements from left to right. Perhaps a horse cannot see absolutely straight ahead, he thinks, abstractly. He knows that whatever happens at the end of this run the horse will lose interest, will stand panting in the pasture with total indifference and he and Judy and Freya will be able to walk calmly back to the gate as if nothing happened. He’ll be able to brush the mud from his jeans, wipe the sweat from his palms and internalize the fear as his own, protect them, make light of what’s happened. He sees its eye and flash of hair across the head, the spot just high of the mouth he will dig the log into. Guy braces himself for the arrival of the force as the animal canters at him, knowing instinctively that the tiny colourful disturbance at the edge of his vision is wrong, a wrong thing, his daughter, abandoning the tree in a reckless dash. She’s stumbling in little trippy steps across the grass in what seems to be a crazy intersection towards the stallion. Guy hears a simultaneous panicked shout from Judy and he knows this next second, this next momentous second, could become the worst moment of his life, the worst moment any man would ever have to witness, and he’s struck rigid with the sudden overwhelming effort of keeping the impossible from happening, the effort of keeping these things apart.

II
    The North Sea

Position: 52° 01’.5N 1° 47’.5E
    Just savour this feeling, he thinks. Hold on to it. He can hear the crying of seabirds, perhaps hundreds of them, echoing across the water, but he can’t spot where they are. He imagines the sound coming from terns or gulls, with slim greased white throats and softer greyer wings. The colours of sea and cloud.
    His boat is fifteen miles offshore, but the North Sea is strange today: it’s completely calm. From where he’s standing, the water sparkles quietly up at him with a thousand pinpricks of light, each one from a miniature sun scattered in a line across the sea. In every direction it stretches as a single glassy object, without any swell or current, to a horizon which is a pure line, like a child’s drawn it, the simple curve of the earth. And the air is so fresh and so perfectly still, filled with its own sea light, it’s as if it could be bottled and brought back to the land - where it would sit on a shelf, shining.
    Guy has been standing on the deck of the Flood since dawn, watching the water, occasionally looking for basking sharks through his binoculars. He hadn’t expected this. September can be a stirring month.
    Just in front of the boat he notices something floating. It looks like some glorious beetle on its back, with a shell wide open. But it’s not. It’s a bird. He watches, amazed, wondering whether it’s alive or dead - these things always have the appearance of being in both states. Then it moves,