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thee from felicity awhile

      and in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain

      to tell my story.

      ‘They have their purpose and their eyes are bright with it. Keats.’

      ‘Meaning?’ said Allan.

      ‘Meaning vanity. If there were no vanity there would be nothing. The flowers and the women all drawing attention to themselves. The signals. Have you not known, have you not seen, all the people around you, each with his own purpose staring out of his eyes and proclaiming “I am.” “I am the most important. Look at me.” “I must not be trifled with.”? Have you not known it, have you not seen it, have you not been terrified by it? That each feels himself as important as you, that intelligence weakens, that the unkillable survive, the ones who don’t think?’

      A seagull swooped out of the stormy black and landed on a rock with yellow splayed claws, turning its head rapidly this way and that as if deliberating.

      ‘Then,’ said Donny, ‘vanity prevails.’

      ‘Without vanity we are nothing,’ said William, ‘without the sense of triumph.’

      ‘And we have to pay for it with pomp,’ said Allan. ‘Out of the savage sea the perfected ennui.’

      ‘From the amoeba to the cravat,’ said Donny. The wind blew about them: it was like being at the end of the world, the crazy jigsaw of rocks, the sea solid in its strata, the massive power of its onrush, the spray rising high in the sky.

      ‘Where action ends thought begins,’ said William, almost in a whisper. ‘Out of the water to the dais. And yet it is unbearable.’

      ‘We rely on the toilers of the night,’ said Donny.

      ‘Is there anything one can say to the sea,’ said Allan, ‘apart from watch it?’

      They looked at it but their hatred was not so great as its, not so indifferent. It was without mercy because it did not know of them. It was the world before man.

      ‘Imagine it,’ said William, ‘out of this, all that we have.’

      ‘And us,’ said Donny, no longer clowning.

      ‘To watch it,’ said Allan. After a while he said,

      ‘It would be fair if we threw stones at it too.’

      ‘Yes,’ agreed the other two, beginning to throw stones at the white teeth, but they sank without trace and could hardly be seen against the spray which ascended like a crazy ladder.

      There was no ship to be seen at all, only the weird rowing boat that had passed twice with the white bearded man in it.

      They turned away from it, frightened.

      As they were leaving, Allan said,

      ‘There is nothing more beautiful than a woman when her long legs are seen, tanned and lovely, as she drinks her whisky or vodka as the case may be.’

      They bowed their heads. ‘You have found the answer, Ο spectacled sage of the west. Except that the battle there too is continuous.’

      ‘Except that everywhere the battle is continuous,’ said William. ‘Even in the least suspected places. But you are right nevertheless.’

      They took one last look at the sea. In the smoky spray they seemed to see a fish woman, cold and yet incredibly ardent, arising with merciless scales.

      ‘I knew a girl once,’ said Allan. ‘We slept on the sofa in her sitting room.’

      ‘Both of you?’ said the others.

      There was a reverent silence.

      ‘I knew a girl once,’ said William. ‘I remember her gloved hands on the steering wheel, and the dashboard light was green.’

      Their clothes stirred in the breeze. Their flapping collars stung their cheeks. They passed the place where the dead seagull was.

      ‘We will bury it,’ said Allan. ‘It’s only fair.’

      ‘No,’ said William, ‘it would be artificial.’

      ‘Agreed,’ said Donny. ‘Motion carried, seconded, transformed and retransformed in some order.’

      They saw a rat. It looked at them with small beady eyes and scurried out of sight.

      ‘Look,’ said William. A cormorant dived from a rock into the seething water. They watched for it to emerge and then it did so like a wheel turning. Also, they saw three seals racing alongside each other at full speed, sleek heads and parts of the body above the surface.

      ‘They say it is the fastest fish in the sea,’ said William.

      ‘They say seals turn into women,’ said Allan, polishing his glasses. They watched the speedboats drilling through the water. The town with its spires, halls, houses, pubs, rose from the edge of the sea, holding out against the wind. It was what there was of it. Nothing that was not unintelligible could be said about it.

       Napoleon and I

      I TELL YOU WHAT IT IS. I sit here night after night and he sits there night. In that chair opposite me. The two of us. I’m eighty years old and he’s eighty-four. And that’s what we do, we sit and think. I’ll tell you what I sit and think about. I sit and think, I wish I had married someone else, that is what I think about.

      And he thinks the same. I know he does. Though he doesn’t say anything or at least much. Though I don’t say much either. We have nothing to say: we have run out of conversation. That’s what we’ve done. I look at his mouth and it’s moving. But most of the time he’s not speaking. I don’t love him. I don’t know what love is. I thought once I knew what love was. I thought it was something to do with being together for ever. I really thought that. Now I know that it’s not that. At least it’s not that, whatever else it is. We do not speak to each other.

      He smokes a pipe sometimes and his mouth moves. He is like a cartoon. I used to read the papers and I used to see cartoons in them but now I don’t read the papers at all. I don’t read anything. Nor does he. Not even the sports pages though he once told me, no, more than once, he told me that he used to be a great footballer, ‘When I used to go down the wing,’ he would say. ‘What wing?’ I would say, and he would smile gently as if I were an idiot. ‘When I used to go down the wing,’ he would say. But now he doesn’t go down any wing. He’s even given up the tomato plants. And he imagines he’s Napoleon. It’s because of that film he says. There were red squares of soldiers in it. He sits in his chair as if he’s Napoleon, and he says things to me in French though I don’t know French and he doesn’t know French. He prefers Napoleon to his tomato plants. He sits in his chair, his legs spread apart, and he thinks about winning Waterloo. I think he’s mad. He must be, mustn’t he? Sometimes he will look up and say ‘Josephine’, the one word ‘Josephine’, and the only work he ever did was in a distillery. Napoleon never worked in a distillery. I am sure that never happened. He’s a comedian really. He sits there dreaming about Napoleon and sometimes he goes out and examines the ground to see if it’s wet, if his cavalry will be all right. He kneels down and studies the ground and then he sits and puffs at his pipe and he goes and takes a pair of binoculars and he studies the landscape. I never thought he was Napoleon when I married him. I just said I do. Nor did he. I used to give him his sandwiches in a box when he went to work and he just took them in those days. I don’t think he ever asked for wine. Now he thinks the world has mistreated him, and he wants an empire. Still they do say they need something when they retire. The only thing is, he’s been retired for twenty years or maybe fifteen. He came home one day and he put his sandwich box on the table and he said, ‘I’m retired’ (that was in the days when we spoke to each other) and I said, ‘I know that.’ And he went and looked after his tomato plants. In those days he also loved the cat and was tender to his

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