Death

THIRTEEN

Sunday

Shaw took his coffee and went out on the stoop of the cafe. Inside, Lena was making sandwiches, setting out cakes and fruit, matching chairs to tables. It was a moment which always annoyed him: the cottage wasn’t really big enough for a kitchen of its own so they’d decided they’d eat, as a family, in the cafe. So it was his home, Fran’s too, but breakfasts were always consumed on a conveyor belt. Then the moment would be gone, which was a shame, because it was one of the moments he liked best: a cup of coffee, the day ahead, the sound of the sea through the open windows. Even on a Sunday he had to make way for the paying customers. Later they’d wonder if this little peak of stress and anxiety had sparked what was to follow.

‘Are you really going into work?’ asked Lena, her head at the window, her hands in blue gloves. ‘Look at it.’ she added, glancing at the horizon, where a single fair-weather cumulus was sailing by like a sky galleon.

‘I have too. Tom phoned — he thinks he’s getting the mass screening results early.’ He wanted to explain but she’d gone. The lab in Birmingham had been in touch, a job had fallen through so they’d been able to put all their resources on the DNA checks. They were just running double-checks before emailing coded results.

He’d have swum if the sea had been in but it was low tide, dead water, and all he could see was sand, with blue bands of trapped water, running parallel with the coast, right out towards the horizon. If he walked a mile he might get into five feet of water. This was the reason Old Hunstanton had a hovercraft as well as an inshore lifeboat: so that it could operate in this strange landscape of nearly-land, threaded with nearly-sea. It wasn’t his favourite time on the beach. The view was bleak, bleaker for the sun and the sky which both needed the sea to provide a reflection.

To break his darkening mood he walked out, still holding the small china espresso cup, to the edge of the first lagoon. Technically, he knew, this was a ‘lead’ of water — an open stretch, but pronounced as a dog’s lead, not the metal. Navigating the North Norfolk coast was all about knowing how these leads joined up or, more to the point, didn’t. What was a real surprise to many sailors was just how undulating this landscape could be. Down in the water you could be several feet below the nearest sand bar and unable to see beyond it, to the next lead. In its own way it was a maze.

He stood at the crest of the nearest sand bar and, using his good eye, tried to locate his three regular landmarks — to the south, about two miles, the small stump of the lighthouse on the cliffs at Hunstanton. Then the Boston Stump, the 270-foot-high parish church in the Lincolnshire town on the far side of The Wash, a landmark so unmissable Winston Churchill wanted it blown up during the war to stop German bomber pilots using it to navigate their way to London. And finally, the single breakwater at Holme to the north, the only unshifting feature on the exposed outward curve of the coast, as it turned to face the open North Sea. This routine — configuring his own position from these three points — was a ritual that helped. It made him feel rooted, as if he had some innate, onboard GPS.

He turned to look back at the cafe. Fran was sat on the stoop, morose, unhappy to face the rest of the weekend with her parents both working. She held something on her lap and Shaw guessed it was a DS, her favourite game, SinCity, loaded up. It was Shaw’s favourite too — a complex 3D fantasy in which you were able to build a city and watch it grow, spreading a latticework of streets and highways across an imaginary landscape. He wondered, for the first time, whether she’d have been happier growing up in a real city. Summers were fine because she had the beach and a steady stream of visiting friends, but the winters were lonelier and, perhaps for a child, dispiriting. And he wondered, but had never shared the anxiety with Lena, if they were robbing her of the magic of the sea by giving it to her every day of her life.

Looking once more to the horizon he tried to glimpse open water. But in the mid-distance he saw instead two black specks: seals, undoubtedly, lounging on a sandbar summit where the sun had already dried out the damp colour to leave it a poster paint yellow.

The image flickered. Shaw’s heartbeat jumped, an injection of adrenaline making his blood race. He closed his eyes, trying to think of nothing. The sensation in his right, damaged eyeball was like one of those tics you can get above or below the eye when a fibrillating micro-muscle signals how tired you really are. But he wasn’t tired. He’d slept well. He opened his good eye and focused on the two seals, but the image flickered again, and this time there was a pain in the good eye — right through it, as if the ball had been lanced with a needle. Both eyes closed, he knelt on the sand, placed the cup carefully down, and willed his heartbeat to slow. It took a minute, and even then he knew it hadn’t returned to normal. He stood, distressed to feel the muscles holding his left knee straight were unsteady too, so that the kneecap trembled.

Looking south he found the lighthouse tower. The image was clear. But when he traced the distant horizon for the Boston Stump the image blurred; two horizons suddenly separating, then meshing. Stress was pumping water into the eye which made the image mist completely, so he closed both eyes again.

He waited, feeling his heart thud, the sound of blood in his ears. Without the visual world he felt adrift, the distant sound of waves falling adding to a feeling of disorientation. What next? Wait, then open his eyes and get back to the cafe. Was this what he’d see for ever? The thought made him sick. Even if his vision cleared he’d have to see the eye specialist. Perhaps they’d have to take the blind eye out because that might help. Or operate on the good eye. He could see the word ‘blind’ on a page, diagrams of the eyeball above and below. The world for Shaw was intensely visual; the loss of it would change him for ever. And then, sickeningly, he remembered what he’d tried to forget over these last few days and weeks — the rapid and almost preternatural heightening of his powers of smell and hearing.

His body had known, even before his brain; it had begun to prepare for blindness, honing other senses to take the place of the pictures by which he navigated his way through life. He couldn’t stop himself then, trying to still the panic by opening his eyes. The fluttering stopped and the image sharpened: one of the seals was trying to get in the water, like a sleeping bag on the move, while the other rolled away. But the eyeball still felt wrong, as if he’d suddenly become hyper-aware of its movements, synapses opening up in his brain to monitor its position in real time. A footstep behind him sucked at the sand and he turned to find Lena just a few feet away, with a fresh cup of espresso.

‘Peace offering,’ she said, then froze. ‘Peter, you’re crying.’ She kept walking towards him and put her free hand round his neck, gripping the base of his skull, sliding her fingers through the close-cropped hair. ‘Peter, what is it? Peter, look at me.’ And they were the words he’d always remember from that moment. ‘Look at me.’