Being Dead Read Online Free PDF

operatic sense of drama – could make the bay perform.
    The man had reached the outer sea curve of the shore. He was not singing either. He was as quiet and careful as a stalking cat. He was a noble beast. This part was the most enjoyable, the chase and the surprise. He wasn’t nervous for himself. He was in charge. Robbing them would be as easy, to use the childhood phrase, as shitting on a rug. He’d startle them. Even if they saw him coming, what could they do except presume that someone with a piece of granite in his hand would only bring misfortune? If they cried out for help, there’d be no help. No one would come to rescue them. There’d be no miracles. This was both the quiet part of the week and the quiet part of the coast. No builders yet. The dunes of Baritone Bay were – as he was now discovering – a long diversion from the track, hard going, and worth the detour only to those who relished aching legs, and sand and chaff inside their shoes. Walkers took a firmer and a safer route. Someone could die out on the dunes and not be found except by gulls.
    It took him almost half an hour to find the couple at their picnic spot, cushioned by the lissom grass. As soon as he had climbed up off the shore into the slopes, he’d lost his way amongst the dunes. One dune, close up, was like any other. The wind had made them so. Their scarp and dips were matching, shape for shape. Twice he came between two dunes to find himself back on the shore again. He almost threw his granite rock into the waves and let the couple keep their cash and sandwiches. The weather had become too hot for him. His trousers had been soaked with spray by running waves. His shoes were wet. His thigh, which he’d struck so theatrically with the block of granite, was bruised and stiffening. Less than an hour’s walk away – if he left now – there was a car park below the visitors’ centre, which might provide easier profit. He could smash some windows and help himself to the coats, bags and radios inside. But then he heard a wind-snatched voice, the woman’s, followed by a laugh, the woman’s again. He had only to walk towards the sound to find their tracks, and the slippages in the dunes where the couple had displaced the sand with their fine feet. He was so happy he was humming to himself. A humming cat.
    He discovered Joseph and Celice in a shallow dell, protected from the wind, which now was blowing off the coast more forcefully. They were sitting where the lissom grass was at its greenest and its thickest on the landward-facing slopes, up-wind from him. Two lovers on the lawn.
    He crouched behind them, hidden by a ridge, but only watched them for a moment, to check that they were unprepared and vulnerable, that his rock was sitting firmly in his palm, and that he had the strength and will, the inspiration, even, to see this drama through. This was no paltry thing. A thief needs inspiration like any other artisan; he needs some grand and swelling muse, some driving shudder of disgust and ambition to help him bring the granite down. He has to find the fury that links all living creatures, the wildlife in himself, which could destroy in order to create. Where was the pleasure, otherwise?
    The muse obliged the man. He took his four long, descending strides towards their backs. He dared not wait. This wouldn’t take a moment, anyway, if he was purposeful.
    At first, it wasn’t obvious that Celice was naked below the waist and that Joseph had discarded all his clothes. It was too fast to notice anything, except the crown and white roots of the woman’s hennaed hair. The target for his blows. The detail that he’d chosen to inflate his anger: her white roots.
    His arm was in the air. She had her back to him. Her legs were stretched out on the sloping grass so that her body was thrown slightly forward. Her husband sat between her legs, almost like a boy, a teenage son, encircled by the gateway of her knees. Her body pressed against his