How commonplace and stupid it would be if I had a friend now, sitting beside me, someone I had known at school, who would say
'By the way, I saw old Hilda the other day.
You remember her, the one who was so good at tennis.
She's married, with two children.'
And the bluebells beside us unnoticed, and the pigeons overhead unheard.
I did not want anyone with me.
Not even Maxim.
If Maxim had been there I should not be lying as I was now, chewing a piece of grass, my eyes shut.
I should have been watching him, watching his eyes, his expression.
Wondering if he liked it, if he was bored.
Wondering what he was thinking.
Now I could relax, none of these things mattered. Maxim was in London.
How lovely it was to be alone again.
No, I did not mean that.
It was disloyal, wicked.
It was not what I meant.
Maxim was my life and my world.
I got up from the bluebells and called sharply to Jasper.
We set off together down the valley to the beach.
The tide was out, the sea very calm and remote.
It looked like a great placid lake out there in the bay.
I could not imagine it rough now, any more than I could imagine winter in summer.
There was no wind, and the sun shone on the lapping water where it ran into the little pools in the rocks.
Jasper scrambled up the rocks immediately, glancing back at me, one ear blown back against his head, giving him an odd rakish appearance.
'Not that way, Jasper,' I said.
He cared nothing for me of course. He loped off, deliberately disobedient.
'What a nuisance he is,' I said aloud, and I scrambled up the rocks after him, pretending to myself I did not want to go to the other beach.
'Oh, well,' I thought, 'it can't be helped.
After all, Maxim is not with me.
It's nothing to do with me.'
I splashed through the pools on the rocks, humming a tune.
The cove looked different when the tide was out.
Less formidable.
There was only about three foot of water in the tiny harbour.
A boat would just float there comfortably I supposed, at dead low water.
The buoy was still there.
It was painted white and green, I had not noticed that before.
Perhaps because it had been raining the colouring was indistinct.
There was no one on the beach.
I walked across the shingle to the other side of the cove, and climbed the low stone wall of the jetty-arm.
Jasper ran on ahead as though it was his custom.
There was a ring in the wall and an iron ladder descending to the water.
That's where the dinghy would be tied, I suppose, and one would climb to it from the ladder.
The buoy was just opposite, about thirty feet away.
There was something written on it.
I craned my neck sideways to read the lettering.
'Je Reviens'.
What a funny name.
Not like a boat.
Perhaps it had been a French boat though, a fishing boat.