The Morning Gift

A shaft of brilliant light pierced the surface and caught the needle of a lighthouse on a distant island . . . There were fields on this ocean: patches of shining brightness, others like gunmetal and calm oases like lagoons. It never stopped being, the sea, she had not been prepared for that.

The tide was out. Taking off her shoes and stockings, she felt the cool, ribbed sand massaging her bare feet. There were acres of it; golden, unsullied . . . Moving drunkenly towards the edge of the water, she began to calm down enough to notice the inhabitants of this light-dappled world . . . Three heavy, ecclesiastical-looking birds diving from a rock – cormorants she thought – but could not name the narrow-winged flock whose whiteness was so intense that they seemed to be lit up from within.

Now she came to the first rock pool and here was a simpler, more containable, delight. Dr Felton had taught her well; she knew the Latin names of the anemones and brittle stars, the little darting shrimps, but this was the world of fairy tale. Here were submerged forests, miniature bays of sand, pebbles like jewels . . .

By the rim of the ocean, she paused and put a foot into the water, and gasped. It was like being electrocuted, so cold. Even the foam carried a charge . . . and then almost at once she became accustomed to it. No, that was wrong; you couldn’t become accustomed to this invigorating, fierce stab of cold and cleanness, but you could want more of it and more.

I didn’t know, she thought. I didn’t imagine that anything could be like this, could make one feel so . . . purged . . . so clean . . . so alone and unimportant and yet so totally oneself. For a moment, she wanted everyone she loved to be there – her parents and Mishak and Mishak’s beloved Marianne risen from the dead, to come and stand here beside the sea. But then the sky performed one of its conjuring tricks, sending in a fleet of purple clouds which moved over the newly risen sun, so that for a moment everything changed again – became swirling and dark and turbulent . . . and then out came the sun once more, strengthened . . . higher in the sky . . . and she thought, no, here I can be alone because there isn’t any alone or not alone; there’s only light and air and water and I am part of it and everyone I love is part of it, but it’s outside time, it’s outside needing and wanting.

It was at this point of exaltation that she noticed a small white sail and a boat coming round the point and making for the bay.

Quin too had woken at dawn and made his way to the sheltered cove by Bowmont Mill where he kept the dinghy when it was not in use. He’d been glad of an excuse to get away from the house and bring the boat round for the students; glad that the weather had lifted: the golden day was an unexpected bonus. For the rest he was without thought, feeling the wind, tending his sail . . .

He saw the lone figure as soon as he rounded the point and even from a distance realized that the girl, whoever she was, was in a state of bliss. The breeze whipped her hair, one hand held the folds of her skirt as she moved backwards and forwards, playing with the waves.

The obvious images were soon abandoned. This was not Botticelli’s Venus risen from the foam, not Undine welcoming the dawn, but something simpler and, under the circumstances, more surprising. This was Ruth.

She stood quietly watching as he dropped his sail and allowed the dinghy to run onto the sand. It was not until she waded out to help him, pulling the boat up with each lift of the waves, that he spoke.

‘An unexpected pleasure,’ he said idiotically – but for Ruth the creased, familiar smile threatened for a moment the impersonality of this scoured and ravishing world. ‘I didn’t think you were coming.’

‘My mother bullied me and Uncle Mishak. Oh, but imagine; if they hadn’t. Imagine if I’d missed all this!’

‘You like it?’ asked Quin, who found it advisable to confine himself to banalities, for it had been disconcerting how well she had fitted the dream of those who come in from the sea: the long-haired woman waiting by the shore.

She shook her head wonderingly. ‘I didn’t think there could be anything like this. You lose yourself in music, but in the end music is about how to live; it comes back to you. But this . . . I suppose one can have petty thoughts here, but I don’t see how.’

The dingy was beached now. Quin took a rope from the bows and tied it round a jagged rock – and together they made their way towards the boathouse. Since she had walked in a trance towards the rim of the sea, Ruth had never once looked backwards to the land. Now she stopped dead and said: ‘Oh, what is that? What is that place?’

‘What do you mean?’ Quin, at first, didn’t understand the question.

‘Up there. On the cliff. That building.’

‘That? Why, surely you know? That’s Bowmont.’