LITMIR.BIZ

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pink flowers that hid behind the dust-covered leaves. ‘Marsh-mallows are related to these. You make the sweets from its roots.’ The road curved in the shadow of a slender elm, and where the road straightened a company of tall yellow flowers stood on the verge. ‘Now this is a kind of St John’s-wort,’ Mr Beckwith explained. ‘If you snap the stem a juice comes out that’s red as blood.’ He put a finger on the translucent speckles of a leaf. ‘Because of that, and because these look like holes, people used to think it was a cure for wounds. But they’re not holes. They’re like sweat glands. Smell,’ said Mr Beckwith, and Alexander squatted next to the flowers to inhale a smell of dog fur. On a wall near the sign for Germoe they saw navelwort. ‘Known as coolers,’ said Mr Beckwith. ‘Used to be put on burns, to cool them.’ He took Alexander’s hand and turned it over to press the dimpled leaves to Alexander’s skin. On the church at Germoe there was saffron-coloured lichen and red valerian. ‘Called kiss-me-quick, or drunkards,’ said Mr Beckwith, smiling as a breeze made the deep red flowers bob drunkenly for them.

      A tractor was snarling up the hill, out of sight, when they sat down on a tussock to look at a pat of bird’s-foot trefoil, a flower as gorgeous as yolks. ‘Known as eggs and bacon, ham and eggs, butter and eggs, hen and chickens,’ said Mr Beckwith. ‘Sometimes called Dutchman’s clogs,’ he added. He hooked a little finger under a flower and made it move, as if tickling it.

      ‘Day,’ said the driver of the tractor, eyeing them dourly.

      ‘Good afternoon,’ replied Mr Beckwith to the driver’s back. ‘Cheerful soul,’ he commented to Alexander, and he released the tiny flowers. ‘The others will wonder what’s become of us,’ he said wearily. ‘We should get going. Lead the way.’

      On the way back Mr Beckwith walked a pace behind Alexander, as he used to do with Megan, and did not speak until they came to the top of the cliff, where they sat together cross-legged on the closely cropped grass, overlooking the beach. A black and white collie coursed across the sand; a man in voluminous swimming trunks swung a bat, and the impact of the ball sounded faintly at the cliff-top, like the click of a pen-cap. A trawler on the horizon was overtaken by the sky’s solitary bulbous cloud. ‘There’s our girl,’ said Mr Beckwith, raising an arm. ‘Off you go,’ he said, as though he thought Alexander had been waiting for permission to leave him.

      Megan was walking with stiff, long strides and her head down, seeming to count her steps, and then she stopped and looked back towards the cliff, as if aware that he was following her. Putting her hand out like a relay runner receiving the baton, she continued her walk, smacking her feet onto the sand. She let him take her hand, but there was no pressure to her touch. It was as if her hand were something she was allowing him to carry.

      ‘You must have gone miles,’ she said.

      ‘We did.’

      ‘I’m going to the rock pools,’ Megan told him. ‘Mum’s asleep but your dad said it was all right.’

      The tide was low and the sand they were treading was rippled like the soles of feet that have been in a bath too long. Megan released his hand and bent down to uproot an open razor clam. She scooped the runny sand from the shell into her palm and held it chest-high between them. ‘It makes you feel frightened when you think about what this is, doesn’t it?’ she said. ‘Look at those cliffs. All this sand has come from them, and one day they’ll be nothing but sand. Isn’t that frightening?’ Alexander regarded the pat of damp grains. ‘Like looking at the stars,’ said Megan. ‘You must do that sometimes?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘And what does it make you think? Doesn’t it make you frightened? You must think something.’

      ‘Makes me wish there were no clouds in the way.’

      ‘That isn’t a proper thought, Eck,’ said Megan sharply, and she shook the sand from her hand. ‘Some of them are millions and millions and millions of miles away. So many millions that what you’re looking at isn’t there any longer. The light is like a parcel sent by somebody who’s died before it reaches you. Isn’t that horrible?’ She watched Alexander as he inspected the sky. ‘The stars are there now, but we can’t see them because the sun’s out. Or did you think they all went off somewhere for the day?’

      ‘Of course not.’

      ‘But doesn’t it make you feel giddy?’

      ‘Doesn’t what?’

      ‘That a long time ago all this wasn’t here, and a long time from now it won’t be here any more.’

      ‘No,’ said Alexander. ‘It’s here now. We’re here now. I don’t think anything about the beach. It just is.’

      ‘Don’t be daft, Eck. Nothing just is.’

      ‘Well, you just are. I just am.’

      ‘No you’re not. You’re the son of your parents. You’re part of them.’

      ‘No I’m not.’

      ‘You are, Eck. Where do you think you came from?’

      ‘I know where I came from. I’m not thick.’

      ‘Well then. You look like your mum. Exactly like her. It’s not a coincidence. A part of you is her.’

      ‘No,’ protested Alexander. ‘All of me is me.’

      ‘Same with your dad,’ continued Megan.

      ‘I’m nothing like him.’

      ‘Your dad’s a bit serious and a bit scatty.’

      ‘He’s not. He’s not at all scatty.’

      ‘Yes, he is. He’s always larking about.’

      ‘I don’t lark about,’ Alexander complained.

      ‘Yes you do. You do silly voices.’

      ‘No I don’t.’

      ‘Eck, you do,’ said Megan emphatically. ‘You do other people’s voices.’

      ‘But that’s not silly voices.’

      ‘Yes, it is.’

      ‘What’s the point of this?’ he asked. ‘Why do you want to argue?’

      ‘I don’t, Eck. But you’re so sweet, I can’t help it,’ Megan told him, and she took his hand as they picked a route through the fallen stones.

      They were on their own below Hoe Point, where Megan found a pool that was as smooth and long as a bathtub, with a fringe of spinach-coloured seaweed at one end, where she rested her head as she lay down. Water from the breaking waves frisked along the channels of the rocks and leaped into the pool. The water lapped at Megan’s goosefleshed thighs. Alexander would always remember this, and her hair twisted into unravelled plaits by the saltwater, and the freckles of dried salt that were mixed with the freckles of her cheeks.

      Alexander watched the gulls wheeling out from the cliff where he had sat with Mr Beckwith. The birds made no noise now, and evening was beginning. The white flecks on the sea were like flowers that nobody would ever be able to pick.

      ‘You haven’t blinked for a minute,’ said Megan. ‘What are you thinking about?’

      ‘Not again,’ he moaned. ‘I’m just looking, Meg.’

      ‘Looking without thinking anything. I don’t believe you. It’s not possible.’

      ‘There’s a lot to look at.’

      She looked at him as if pretending to be baffled. ‘Faraway Eck,’ she said, and she put her arms around his shoulders as a sister might have done.

      ‘Odd Eck,’ he responded. Creamy water hurried up through the gullies and touched his toes.

      And he would remember the pyramid of towels packed onto a saddle of sand between two clumps of grass, and his father handing Mr Beckwith his Brownie camera. His father

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