stopped at stations on the way.
The train was almost empty when we came to a station called Chalfont & Latimer. I glanced out at the station as we drew in, seeing the wet platform and shining overhead lamps, the familiar advertisements for films and language schools. Passengers waited by the carriage doors, and amongst them was Seri.
In my somnolent state I barely realized she was there, but when she smiled at me and stepped outside I knew I was to follow.
I was slow and clumsy, and only just got through the doors before they closed. By then, Seri had slipped through the ticket barrier and was again out of sight. I followed, thrusting my ticket at the collector and moving on before he could check it.
The station was next to a main road; as I came out, the train I had been on went noisily oven the ironwork bridge. I looked to left and night along the road, seeking Seri. She was already an appreciable distance away, walking briskly along the road in the direction of London. I hurried after her, pacing myself with short bursts of running.
The road was lined with modern detached houses, set back from the traffic with concrete drives, neat lawns and flowerbeds, and flagstoned patios. Lighted reproduction carriage lamps glittered their reflectioiis on the rainy ground. Behind curtained windows I could glimpse the hand blue glare of television screens.
Seri stayed effortlessly ahead of me, maintaining her brisk walk without seeming to hurry, yet however much I ran she was always the same distance ahead. I was getting out of breath so I slowed my pace to a moderate walk. It had stopped raining while I was on the train, and already the air was milder, more in keeping with the season.
Seri reached the end of the lighted section of the road, and moved into the strip of countryside between Chalfont and Chorleywood. I lost sight of her in the dark, so I ran again. In a minute or two I had also passed into the darkness, but I could see Seri whenever cars passed with their headlights on.
Farmland lay on either side of the road. Ahead of me, in the south-eastern sky, the sodium radiance of London was lighting the clouds.
Seri halted and turned back to face me, perhaps to he sure I had seen her. Cars passed, throwing spray and light in drifting veils. Thinking she was waiting for me I ran again, splashing in the puddles of the unmade verge. When I was within distance, I shouted: 'Seri, please stay and talk to me!'
Seri said--You've got to see the islands, Peter.
There was a gate where she had waited, and she passed thnough as I came breathily up to her, but by the time I followed she was already halfway across the field. Her white shirt and pale hair seemed to drift in the dank.
I staggered on again, feeling the turned soil clogging around my shoes.
I was tiring, there had been too many upheavals. Seri would wait.
I came to a halt, slithering on the lumpy sods, and leaned forward to catch my breath. I hung my head, nesting with my hands on my knees.
When I looked up again I could see Seri's ghostly figure at the bottom of the dip, by what appeared to be a hedge. Behind her, on the gently rising slope of a hill, was the lighted window of a house. Trees stood darkly blurred on the close horizon.
She did not wait: I saw her white movement, sideways along the hedge.
I sucked a deep breath. 'Seri! I've got to rest!'
It made her pause momentarily, but if she called an answer I did not hear it. It was difficult to see: paleness moved like a moth against a curtain, then it was gone.
I looked back. The main road was lights sweeping behind trees, and the distant sounds of wheels and engines. To think made m head hurt. I was in a foreign country, needing translations, but my interpreter had left me. I waited until my breath steadied, then walked on slowly, raising and lowering my feet with the deliberation of a shackled man. The mud made deadweights of my legs, and every time I managed to scrape some of it away more clung on.
Somewhere invisible to me, Seri must he watching my ponderous, arm-swinging progress through the clay.
At last I reached the hedge and wiped my feet in the long grass that grew there. I moved on in the direction taken by Seri, and peered towards where I had seen the house with the lighted window, seeking a reference. I must have been mistaken, though, because I could now see no sign of it. A wind, mild and steady, came from beyond the hedge, laden with a familiar tang.
A gate was let into the hedge and I went through. Beyond, the ground continued to drop away in a barely perceptible gradi ent. I took a few steps in the dark, feeling for the unwelcome cling of waterlogged soil, but here the grass was short and dry.
Ahead was a horizon: distant and fiat, flickering with a few tiny lights almost invisible in their remoteness. The sky had cleared, and overhead was a display of stars of such brilliance and clarity as I had rarely seen. I marvelled up at them for a while. then returned to the more earthly business of cleaning the remainder of the mud from my shoes. I found a short branch on the ground and sat down to poke and scrape at the gluey muck. When I had finished I leaned back on my hands to stare down the slope at the sea.
My eyes were adjusting to the starlight, and I made out the low black forms of islands; the lights I had seen were from a town on an island straight ahead. To my right was a shoulder of land, which ran out to sea with an aged, rounded resilience, forming the high end of a small bay. The land to my left was flatter, but I could see rocks and a sand-bar, and beyond these the coastline curved back and out of sight.
I walked on and soon came to the beach, clambering down a small cliff of soil and flints, then running out across dried seaweed and powdery sand that seemed to crush beneath my feet. I ran as far as the water's edge, then stood still in the darkness and listened to the special sound of the sea. I felt utterly reassured and complete, able to face anything, free of worry, cured by the essences of the ocean. The faint pungency of salt, warm sand and drying seaweed held powerful associations with childhood: holidays, parents, minor accidents, and that sense of excitement and adventure which, for me, had always overcome the envies and power struggles between Kalia and myself.
