Undercurrent Read Online Free Page B

anniversaries are dangerous; they loosen the tongue with grief. And this is supposed to be a record of my thoughts, to prove that I can still think of other things. I must NOT venture into facts.

    FMC

CHAPTER TWO

    He first deceased; she for a little tried

    To live without him, liked it not and died.

    HENRY woke with these words being muttered to him from a far distance of memory. A very compact poem, but one which moved him unbearably. He tried to see if it would work the other way round; she first deceased, etc., but it did not. The sounds which confused him, along with the words he could have sworn he heard whispered in his ear, were those of a cacophony of seagulls and the irregular heartbeat of the sea, echoing through his room, dragging on the shingle in a series of sighs, drawing him towards the window.
    The window stood out from the roof in a small bay made for one, angled against the slope of a turret, so that when he stood inside the frame of it, he felt part of the sky. The gulls wheeled round his head, quarrelling and screaming so close that he ducked automatically, convinced it was he who angered them. There was a streak of guano on the glass, blurring the sight of the watery sun.
    It was paler than pale egg yolk, opaque, almost no colour at all. He lived with such artificial colours, the bright primaries of packaging and pills, colours made for noticing and remembering.
    Not like this. Cloud moved across the egg yolk sun. The sea itself was too vast to contemplate; the horizon melted into mist. Henry looked down towards the ground. It was not nearly as far away as he felt it was. '
    There was greater comfort in looking down than looking up. The vastness of sea and sky made him feel small, while the activity on the ground made him feel human. There was a jogger in a red fleece, varying the muscles deployed in his exercise by jogging backwards on the broad pavement opposite the House of Enchantment, flanking the sea.
    The jogger stopped moving, breathed deeply, hands on hips for a second while he surveyed the sea before stretching his legs, placing them one at a time on the low wall of the parapet and bending his torso towards his thigh. Good boy, Henry applauded. A woman with a posse of chattering children and a baby in a pram passed by the jogger, oblivious to anything but her own amiable instructions. She slowed the pram to avoid a couple with two yapping dogs, one small and piebald, one large and tan, overexcited, pulling at the lead, dancing in tail thrashing frenzy. The jogger continued his stretches. Another runner appeared from stage right. A child sat, waiting for a bus, hugging herself into her coat. A black dog was at the edge of the water, recovering a brown, crumpled object and worrying at it. Henry had the fleeting thought that the object might actually be his hat and hoped he was wrong. He felt a brief and inexplicable moment of happiness. There were people here, after all. A backwards-running jogger, guys keeping fit, that was normal. The dog owners chided their animals.
    The dogs made him sentimental. He should not have lied about owning a dog, just to ingratiate himself. The black dog, tail blurred in movement, yapped and growled at the water's edge, big, bold and secretly scared. Henry scratched his chest and smiled encouragement. When a big wave came in, the dog retreated, barking defiance. Know how you feel, buddy. We all have to bark, whether we mean it or not.
    Then, from stage left, came a strange figure, walking so fast he could compete with the jogger. He was tall and thin and nothing seemed to fit, a suit and coat hanging from his frame like a series of scarves. Business attire, if you happened to be a funeral director, Henry thought; a rabbi on a bad day, some distraught unorthodox, orthodox Jew, smoking, talking to himself, looking at nothing but the inside of his own skull, forgetting in between furious drags on the cigarette that it was lit at all. How could anyone smoke in that