Sea Change Read Online Free PDF Page B

the distances, as if someone was pulling it across the sea with a magnet. The exhaustion had crept up on him, played tricks with his mind, made him think that there was something he feared, a few strokes behind him, nearly at his feet, reaching out for him. He knew what it had been. It had been the thought of giving up. Keeping that behind him - that’s what had kept him going.
    He stumbles on cold numb feet across the deck into the wheelhouse, then down into the saloon, where he wraps himself in towels. His fingers are blue and wrinkled like a drowned man’s. In the bathroom mirror he notices how the sea has given his expression a startled, frightened look. His eyes are wide and glistening along the lids as if he’s been crying, and his stubble seems to have grown, in the hours that he’s been out there - each hair has become the point of a mini thorn in his skin.
    He looks at himself in the mirror like he’s a stranger. He’s not unattractive, he’s never been fat, but he’s a little unkempt. His hair is dark brown and naturally curly and getting a bit too long and prone to looking windswept. He’s never been able to do anything other than let it grow. Let the others be neat. He wears glasses, not at this moment, but he can see the marks they’ve left over time across the bridge of his nose. He’s had the same pair for years - with thick horn-rimmed frames. Without his glasses he looks shocked, as if he’s just been slapped, he must be so used to them. His eyes seem calm today, but so often they tend to be emotional, a little too ready to give his feelings away, he’s always been told that. He tries a smile, then a grin which looks ridiculous.
    ‘Well done,’ he congratulates himself. ‘You made it back.’

    After night falls, he stands at the ship’s wheel, looking into the blackness of the North Sea which, for a moment, appears like a hole, without depth or end. Before he came out here, he had thought the sea was all about sunlight, but it’s not, it’s about darkness. It presses towards him, large as a desert.
    He notes the barometer and battery levels, checks for leaks from the pipes, then opens the rear hatch and climbs down into his cabin. Guy already feels a great deal of time has passed since he came out of it this morning. The air has a trapped quality, left over from last night. His bunk is shadowed and messy and next to it is the desk where he sat up late last night, on a creaking chair, writing in the diary under the piercing light of an anglepoise. He sees the open book now, with his neat handwriting going across the pages, and is a little wary of approaching. The final few sentences on the page look overwhelmed by the whiteness of the paper that follows them. Writing calmed him last night, but what can save you at night can destroy your day. That’s something he needs to remember.
    Guy knows this is the time he must make up a new entry in the diary. By now it’s unavoidable. He feels the familiar mix of emotions: the fear of the empty pages, where they will lead tonight, the excitement that, for a time, he will be able to lose himself in a dream of his own creation.
    He’s written every evening for the last five years, since his life changed irrevocably. And thinking this way, he’s able to begin, knowing he can no longer imagine his days passing without doing it.

    Guy stands behind the art deco hotel in the soft warm night air of Florida. The pool he looks at is out of this world. It has the appearance of an iceberg - lit from within, with water pouring round its edges in a smooth silky curve. Further off, palm trees and bougainvillea stand in the shadows, and small curved columns of water leap surprisingly from concealed nozzles set in the lawn. Somewhere beyond the grounds, beyond the palm trees, is the Atlantic Ocean - he’s felt its breath in cool shallow waves that come in bands across the night air.
    He’s mesmerized by the pool, can hardly take his eyes from it, but sensing an