Free Perfectly Pure and Good by Frances Fyfield Page A

vacuum of her bed the panic of separation and the muck sweat of fear.
    Her fingers touched her face: there were lines forming round her eyes; she could take great clumps of skin and pull them off, could lift her scalp away from the bone, feel the scars on her shoulders and her arms, force herself to think of the healing sea which would cure it all.
    Perspiration trickled down her back before she slept. It was not the countryside of which she had dreamed.
    The day bore no relation to the night: from burial in the terrible silence, she was suddenly elevated into the delightful cacophony of dawn. Birdsong first, little fatty thrushes squabbling for attention and clattering on the roof; then the soft cooing of a pigeon, stupidly repetitious, two high notes, one low, no variation but long pauses, and at last, a wholly man-made sound, cutting across the natural like a knife. The mournful wailing of a distant siren, swelling into a full-bellied moan, fading, rising again to a steady wail, diminishing, howling, three, four times. It sounded like a crowd in anguish, an animal in pain, a prayer for the dead, a muezzin calling from the turret of a mosque and she listened spellbound. Minutes later she was out of doors.
    There was nothing but clear sky and a view without ending. The village, with a long bank of land curving away from it seaward like a question mark, lay on her left, half a mile away. In front of her, opposite the house which stood the width of its garden from the cottages, a vast expanse of land amounting to nothing. She watched idly as she walked, until the nothing began to move as the light caught the surface, showing random, glimmering channels full of chuckling water.
    Sarah in plimsolls jogged towards town.
    The channels became wider with each fifty yards, the deceptive flat land gave way to channels of water no longer lapping but guzzling louder and louder in the ten minutes it took her to reach the quay. From the evening gulley of mud and sand, it had become part of the ocean upon which it fed. The sea lapped high against the harbour wall; boats which had been invisible the night before now rode proud and level with her eyes, bobbing and straining with lazy ease. Remnants of tufty land which she had glimpsed standing high and dry in the mist, poked above the surface of the water, like the uncertain remains of hair on a smooth, bald head.
    Early. Salty, fish-smelling. Two men throwing open boxes out of a boat, slamming them on to the stone. The boxes were full of wet, heaving fish. Another man sluiced the deck of the boat from which they unloaded. Blood, mixed with water, ran down the sides. Sarah tried to hide her nausea.
    Èxcuse me . . . What was the siren I heard?'
    `Siren? Oh, that. Lifeboat.' They did not waste words, not unfriendly, but busy.
    `Do you fish with hooks?' she asked stupidly, eyeing the watery blood.
    `Hooks are for fun. You only catch one at a time with hooks. Nets, we use.'
    The fish smell defeated her, she was ashamed to be asking the obvious, risking their mild contempt. The village lay glistening. There were swans in the harbour, carried along by the tide with comical, dignified speed. The amusement arcade was emphatically closed at an hour still too early for the postman. A youth was hosing down the pavement outside, oblivious to bold seagulls whooping over waste-paper bins in search of yesterday's chips. The same uncertain but gentle giant who had appeared in the hairdresser's with his charge, and, later, escorted her beyond the boundaries on her regal progress, recognizable even when the pale sunlight illuminated the fresh bruises on his face. He seemed too lethargic to resent interruption, leant on his broom and watched her cross over from sea to land side of the road, trying to smile in mutual recognition.
    `Hallo,' she said. look, thanks for showing me the way last night. I told them up there,' she nodded in the direction from which she had walked, 'that I felt like the Queen. It was