Here Be Monsters

Ronnie had a good life, with Mary and the children - children who were almost indistinguishable from Ronnie himself now, already dating their High School sweethearts, and not at all awed by Grandpa!

And -

And he had done everything that they - They - had asked of him, so very carefully, over the years -

The path (there had been no path then, never mind the grass!) - the path was taking him close to the cliff-edge now, even offering him some sort of wooden stairway to the beach below (By God! That would have been damn useful, back in '44!) .

But he had to leave the path here, to make their rendezvous.

He looked back. The boy was still there, watching him doubtfully, but he couldn't bring himself to acknowledge that concern, which would surely increase when he set off along the cliff-edge, instead of descending to the beach -

(He could remember the beach in the dark well enough, anyway: all the wreckage of the assault, and the wounded still waiting for evacuation, before his hair-raising rope-ladder climb up the cliff: he had no desire to see that beach again!)

And there was a man picking up litter around the nearest pill-box, too. And he wasn't at all sure that he hadn't been followed; although such matters were outside his remit; besides which, it might be they themselves who were watching over him; and, in any case, it was their business now; and, in the last case of all, it didn't matter now, anyway -

He had done everything they had asked of him, so carefully, so very carefully, over all the years -

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and, until now, so successfully… First, out of conviction; then in doubt, then out of necessity (even then to protect Ronnie, maybe?); and finally almost out of habit - ? But he had done it, anyway!

But now, when it mattered most or least (he honestly didn't know which now), he had given himself this last instruction of all, which would save everyone a great deal of trouble - Them, him, the Central Intelligence Agency, and Ronnie - and Ronnie and the grandchildren most of all!

He just had to find the right place, that was all.

And it had to be out of the boy's sight - and the pillbox-poking Frenchman's… and there was someone else, further away, also scavenging among the debris of yesterday's anniversary celebration…

It had to be the right place: the beach below, memory reminded him, was of pebbles and fallen rocks. But he must get the maximum height, to do it right -

It wasn't as simple as he'd thought it would be, from the recollection of that original climb, and the dark descent, when he'd had a young Ranger to shepherd him, making light of the hazards which had left him in a hot- and-cold sweat. And the grass was still treacherous and slippery.

But now he was almost out of sight of the boy. And the slipperiness of the grass was in a way a bonus: they would say ' Silly old fool! He ought to have known better than to have gone so close to the edge!' And the boy could testify that he had slipped once, already - another bonus!

Here, then? He advanced cautiously towards the edge. Beyond it, the empty sea crawled towards the invisible beach far below, from an equally invisible horizon where it joined the grey evening sky. But there wasn't a sheer drop: the edge had been gouged and smashed by the bombardment of long ago, presenting him with an unsatisfactory descent.

Further along, then. At this rate he would soon reach the place where the actual meeting was scheduled. But that was not for another quarter of an hour (and of course they would be on time; although that was a purely academic virtue now).

It had been a cutting of some kind up which he had originally scrambled finally, and down which he had descended later, so far as he could remember; it might even be the same cutting. There had been a dead German in it, half-way up, on whom he had nearly trodden, and a row of dead Rangers at the top. He could have joined them that night, quite easily: it had happened to a good many of them that day, and probably more than half those who had survived had died in a thousand other ways in the thousands of days since then; he was really doing no more now than joining that majority, bowing to their vote.

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And here was that cutting, surely. But, most annoyingly, there was a young French couple tightly embracing each other at the head of it, the girl's long legs pale in the grass, the man's hand on her breast. That wouldn't suit his contact at all! But, then, that hardly mattered.

Rather than disturb the couple, even though the climb-down taxed his strength considerably, he negotiated the steep side of the cutting, until he came breathlessly to the bottom of it, close to the edge of the cliff again. Only when he reached it, he felt a stab of pain under his ribs as he saw the steepness of the other side, which he now had to ascend; and as he tried to catch his breath the thought came to him: Why not here, then?

Once again he explored the cliff-edge. There was, at last, a perfectly clean drop: the pebbles and boulders were perhaps fifty feet below him.

But was that enough?

He stared down, suddenly fascinated by what he had never seen in daylight, remembering the torchlight glimpses of wrecked equipment and dead men's boots protruding from under blankets on that same margin between the cliff and the sea.

Did he really want to die? It had seemed so easy and so logical, these past few days - why did it seem so difficult now?

He looked out towards the darkening horizon. He had done everything that they had asked of him, even down to that meeting with the Englishman. They would keep their promise now - of that he was sure. So why not -