Sea Change Read Online Free PDF Page A

with water twice a day and somehow, implausibly, holding the North Sea back.
    The maritime map’s not particularly interested in his own stretch of quay, other than recording its depth as an anchorage, but has made more effort to record the tricky deep-water channel that snakes out to open water. Channel is Variable is the warning there, and he’d felt it last night, practically bumping his way between the mud and sand and gravel till he’d rounded the final navigation buoy at the mouth, which had seemed the end of a journey whereas in fact it was the start. The start of the sea. The flat-drained river water had given way to a subtle ocean roll, the thick chug-chug of the engine had risen and fallen in line with the swells, and the breeze itself had seemed to promise a new emptiness, a blank slate.
    He’d arrived in this place, if it can be called a place, just before midnight. He’d cut the throttle, lifted the inspection hatch in the corner of the wheelhouse and climbed down the steep metal ladder into the engine compartment, and by torchlight he’d held his hand above the manifold, feeling its heat, shining the bead of light on the gasket seals and then the piston heads. After that he’d rinsed his shirt in the sink, then hung the shirt on a peg in front of the wheelhouse. All that time he’d tried to ignore the sheer quietness, the sheer absence of this place, since his engine noise had gone. He’d played the upright piano in the saloon, loudly, he’d made an omelette, he’d drunk a bottle of wine, and surprisingly, he’d slept. And just before dawn he’d woken, listening to all those crying gulls, to find the North Sea vanished into this eerie calm.

    He places a kipper in a shallow pan to poach, then makes a paste of anchovies, a drop of Tabasco, a spoonful of cream and some horseradish. He grinds this with a pestle, then tastes it. Lemon required, which he squeezes. The smell of the fish rises from the pan - under the glaze of the water he can see its skin becoming a dark honey colour.
    He checks the greenfinch, which he’d put in a box on the worktop. It’s sitting in the corner, collapsed and waterlogged, with its beak laid out on the cardboard.
    When the kipper is lifted out on to a plate, he sits a knob of butter on top, and watches it gradually slide down one side. His mouth waters. And then he thinks of a surprising addition - he suddenly fancies it - several raw onions which he cuts in quarters and quickly blanches in the fish pan. He’s never had raw onion for breakfast before, but he’s at sea, so what the hell.
    He crunches into one of the onions after sliding it into the anchovy paste. It’s sharp, then sweet, and surprisingly juicy. The paste is dry and dark and curiously smoky. Urged on, he starts to pull apart the fish, working along the crease of the spine, exposing the hair-like bones and pulling them softly through the flesh, a job he’s always loved doing. Hurry hurry leads to worry, that’s a thing his mother used to say, doing the same thing when he was a child. Pray to St Blaise, she’d also say, so you won’t get a fish bone. The kipper gives up its meat in precise oily sections, leaving a skeleton like the ones drawn in cartoons, the one a cat finds in a metal dustbin, and a case of skin which Guy rolls to one side of the plate like a surgeon, with the flat of his knife.
    After he’s finished, he looks at his plate. It seems suddenly poignant. What was it they found on the Mary Celeste ? A half-eaten meal and a broken rail?

    He removes all his clothes, folds them neatly on deck, and climbs down the stepladder into the sea. He winces with the cold as his feet touch the water - it’s not summer out here any more. He takes another step down and touches the bottom rung, below which there is nothing. Clinging like that, to the sheer metal side of the barge, the Flood seems enormous, its skin an animal hide of blotches and dents and paint and over-paint.
    Looking down he sees