Free Caedmon’s Song by Peter Robinson

asked.
    ‘Okay.’
    They walked along East Terrace by the row of tall, white Victorian hotels, towards the Cook statue. As they passed the whale’s jawbone, Keith stopped and said, ‘That must have been
exciting, setting off after whales.’
    ‘I suppose I’d have been one of the waiting women,’ Martha said, ‘hoping to see the jawbone of a whale nailed to the masts.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘It was a sign. It meant everyone was safe. The women used to walk up here along West Cliff and look out for the ships coming home.’ Martha looked at the huge arch of bone. From
where she stood, it framed the floodlit St Mary’s across the harbour as perfectly as if the whole set-up had been contrived by an artist.
    ‘It’s hard to imagine you doing that,’ Keith said, moving on slowly. ‘Pacing and waiting.’
    ‘Why do you say that?’
    ‘Well, I can’t really say I know you of course, but you give me the impression that you’re a modern woman, liberated or whatever. You’d have been more likely to be
out there on the ships.’
    ‘They didn’t take women.’
    ‘I don’t suppose they did. But you know what I mean.’
    Martha didn’t. It had been his first really personal remark and it took her aback. How could someone just sit and talk about inconsequential things for an hour or two and then come out
with a statement like that? She hadn’t even been paying attention to him most of the time. Could he really see into her character? She hoped not. He wouldn’t like what he saw.
    By the Cook statue, they sat on a bench and looked out to sea. A cool breeze ruffled her hair and the moon’s reflection seemed to float somewhere far in the distance, yet its eerie white
light spread over all the ripples and billows of the water as far as the eye could see.
    Martha thought of the passage from Lawrence’s Women in Love, where Birkin threw pebbles at the moon’s reflection in a pond. It was supposed to symbolize something, or so her
English teacher had said, but nobody really knew what. Symbols, to her, had always stood for things you felt but couldn’t explain. And now she felt like throwing pebbles at the rippling white
sea.
    ‘Do you have a boyfriend?’ Keith asked.
    ‘What do you think? You seem to know what kind of person I am. What would you say?’
    ‘I’d be surprised if you didn’t. But if I was him I wouldn’t let you go away by yourself like this.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘Stands to reason, doesn’t it? A pretty girl like you . . .’
    A pretty girl! Martha almost laughed out loud. From where they sat, at the top of the cliff and back a little bit from its fenced edge, she couldn’t see the waves break on the beach below.
She could hear them though, and the deep grumbling hiss as one withdrew filled the silence before Keith spoke again.
    ‘There’s something disconcerting about you, though,’ he said.
    ‘Oh? What’s that?’
    ‘Well, for a start, you’re not easy to get to know.’
    Martha looked at her watch. ‘We’ve been together about three hours,’ she said. ‘How much do you expect to get to know about someone in that time?’
    ‘It’s not time that counts. Some people you can get to know real quickly. Not you, though. There’s hidden depths to you.’
    ‘Why am I disconcerting?’ Martha asked. Despite herself, she was becoming interested in his perception of her.
    ‘Oh, I don’t know. You seem so distant. And you don’t get my jokes. It’s like you’ve spent the last few years on another planet. I mean, if I make a little joke,
you don’t laugh, you ask a question.’
    ‘Like what?’
    Keith laughed. ‘Like that!’
    Martha felt herself blushing. It wasn’t a feeling she enjoyed. She smiled. ‘I suppose you’re right. It’s just curiosity.’
    He shook his head. ‘No, it’s not. It’s more like a form of defence. You’re very evasive. You’ve got a lot of defences, Martha. You’re hiding in there
somewhere, behind all the walls and barbed wire. Why?’
    Martha