Free Legenda Maris by Tanith Lee

awhile, looking out to sea. It
was in vast upheaval, coming in against the cliffs like breaking glasses, and with
a sound of torn atmosphere. Like a monstrous beast it ravened on the shore. A
stupendous force seemed trying to burst from it, like anger, or love; or grief,
orchestrated by Shostakovich, and cunningly lit by an obscured blind sun.
    I wished Daniel could have seen it. I
couldn’t imagine he would remain unmoved, though all about me people were
scurrying to and fro, not sparing a glance.
    When I reached my nominative aunt’s, the
voice of a dismal news broadcast drummed through the house, and the odour of
fried fish lurked like a ghost on the stairs.
    The next day was Tuesday, and I went to
work.
     
    I
dreamed about Daniel a lot during the next week. I could never quite recapture
the substance of the dreams, their plot, except they were to do with him, and
they felt bad. I think they had boarded windows. Perhaps I dreamed she’d killed
him, or I had, and the boards became a coffin.
    Obviously, I’d come to my senses, or
come to avoid my senses. I had told myself the episode was finished with.
Brooding about it, I detected only some perverted desire on my side, and a trap
from hers. There was no one I could have discussed any of it with.
    On Wednesday, a woman in a wheelchair
rolled through lingerie on her way to the china department. Dizzy with fright,
if it was fright, I watched the omen pass. She, Mrs. Besmouth, could get to me
any time. Here I was, vulnerably pinned to my counter like a butterfly on a board.
But she didn’t come in. Of course she didn’t.
    “Here,” said Jill-sans-bra, “look what
you’ve gone and dunn. You’ve priced all these eight-pound slips at
six-forty-five.”
    I’d sold one at six-forty-five, too.
    Thursday arrived, cinema day. A single
customer came and went like a breeze from the cold wet street. There was a
storm that night. A little ship, beating its way in from Calais, was swept over
in the troughs, and there were three men missing, feared drowned. On Friday, a calm
dove-grey weather bloomed, and bubbles of lemonade sun lit the bay.
    I thought about that window looking on
the street. He should have seen the water, oh, he should have seen it, those
bars of shining lead, and the great cool topaz master bar that fell across
them. That restless mass where men died and fish sprang. That other land that
glowed and moved.
    Saturday was pandemonium, as usual.
Angela was cheerful. Her husband was in Scotland, and this evening the
extra-marital relationship was meeting her. Rather than yearn for aloneness
together, they apparently deemed two no company at all.
    “Come over the pub with us. Jill and
Terry’ll be there. And I know Ray will. He asked me if you were coming.”
    Viewed sober, a night of drinking
followed by the inevitable Chinese nosh-up and the attentions of the writhing
Ray, was uninviting. But I, as all pariahs must be, was vaguely grateful for
their toleration, vaguely pleased my act of participant was acceptable to them.
It was also better than nothing, which was the only alternative.
     
    “It’s
nice here,” said Jill, sipping her Bacardi and coke.
    They’d decided to go to a different pub,
and I’d suggested the place on The Rise. It had a log fire, and they liked
that, and horse brasses, and they liked sneering at those. Number 19. Sea View
Terrace was less than a quarter of a mile away, but they didn’t know about that,
and wouldn’t have cared if they had.
    Lean, lithe Ray, far too tall for me,
turned into a snake every time he flowed down towards me.
    It was eight o’clock, and we were on the
fourth round. I couldn’t remember the extra-marital relationship’s name. Angela
apparently couldn’t either; to her he was ‘darling’, ‘love’, or in spritely
yielding moments, ‘Sir’.
    “Where we going to eat then?” said Ray.
    “The Hwong Pews’s ever so nice,” said
Jill.
    Terry was whispering a dirty joke to
Angela, who screamed with