Uneasily, Pelham moved about in his chair, suddenly aware of the edge of the metal table cutting into his elbows. The cheap slatted seat was painfully uncomfortable, and his whole body seemed enclosed in an iron maiden of spikes and clamps. Again a curious premonition of some appalling act of violence stirred through his mind, and he looked up at the sky, almost expecting an airliner to plunge from the distant haze and disintegrate on the crowded beach in front of him.
To Mildred he remarked: ‘It’s remarkable how popular sunbathing can become. It was a major social problem in Australia before the second World War.’
Mildred’s eyes flickered upwards from her book. ‘There was probably nothing else to do.’
‘That’s just the point. As long as people are prepared to spend their entire time sprawled on a beach there’s little hope of ever building up any other pastimes. Sunbathing is anti-social because it’s an entirely passive pursuit.’ He dropped his voice when he noticed the people sitting around him glancing over their shoulders, ears drawn to his high precise diction. ‘On the other hand, it does bring people together. In the nude, or the near-nude, the shop-girl and the duchess are virtually indistinguishable.’
‘Are they?’
Pelham shrugged. ‘You know what I mean. But I think the psychological role of the beach is much more interesting. The tide-line is a particularly significant area, a penumbral zone that is both of the sea and above it, forever half-immersed in the great time-womb. If you accept the sea as an image of the unconscious, then this beachward urge might be seen as an attempt to escape from the existential role of ordinary life and return to the universal time-sea—’
‘Roger, please!’ Mildred looked away wearily. ‘You sound like Charles Sherrington.’
Pelham stared out to sea again. Below him, a radio commentator announced the position and speed of the successfully launched satellite, and its pathway around the globe. Idly, Pelham calculated that it would take some fifteen minutes to reach them, almost exactly at half past three. Of course it would not be visible from the beach, although Sherrington’s recent work on the perception of infra-red radiation suggested some of the infra-red light reflected from the sun might be perceived subliminally by their retinas.
Reflecting on the opportunities this offered to a commercial or political demagogue, Pelham listened to the radio on the sand below, when a long white arm reached out and switched it off. The possessor of the arm, a plump whiteskinned girl with the face of a placid madonna, her round cheeks framed by ringlets of black hair, rolled over on to her back, disengaging herself from her companions, and for a moment she and Peiham exchanged glances. He assumed that she had deliberately switched off the radio to prevent him hearing the commentary, and then realized that in fact the girl had been listening to his voice and hoped that he would resume his monologue.
Flattered, Peiham studied the girl’s round serious face, and her mature but child-like figure stretched out almost as close to him, and as naked, as it would have been had they shared a bed. Her frank, adolescent but curiously tolerant expression barely changed, and Pelham turned away, unwilling to accept its implications, realizing with a pang the profound extent of his resignation to Mildred, and the now unbreachable insulation this provided against any new or real experience in his life. For ten years the thousand cautions and compromises accepted each day to make existence tolerable had steadily secreted their numbing anodynes, and what remained of his original personality, with all its possibilities, was embalmed like a specimen in a jar. Once he would have despised himself for accepting his situation so passively, but he was now beyond any real self-judgment, for no criteria were valid by which to assess himself, a state of gracelessness far more abject than that of the vulgar, stupid herd on the beach around him.
‘Something’s in the water.’ Mildred pointed along the shore. ‘Over there.’
Peiham followed her raised arm. Two hundred yards away a small crowd had gathered at the water’s edge, the sluggish waves breaking at their feet as they watched some activity in the shallows. Many of the people had raised newspapers to shield their heads, and the older women in the group held their skirts between their knees.
‘I can’t see anything.’ Peiham rubbed his chin, distracted by a bearded man on the edge of the promenade above him, a face not Sherrington’s but remarkably like it. ‘There seems to be no danger, anyway. Some unusual sea-fish may have been cast ashore.’
On the terrace, and below on the beach, everyone was waiting for something to happen, heads craned forward expectantly. As the radios were turned down, so that any sounds from the distant tableau might be heard, a wave of silence passed along the beach like an immense darkening cloud shutting off the sunlight. The almost complete absence of noise and movement, after the long hours of festering motion, seemed strange and uncanny, focusing an intense atmosphere of self-awareness upon the thousands of watching figures.
The group by the water’s edge remained where they stood, even the small children staring placidly at whatever held the attention of their parents. For the first time a narrow section of the beach was visible, a clutter of radios and beach equipment half-buried in the sand like discarded metallic refuse. Gradually the new arrivals pressing down from the promenade occupied the empty places, a manoeuvre carried out without any reaction from the troupe by the tideline. To Pelham they seemed like a family of penitent pilgrims who had travelled some enormous distance and were now standing beside their sacred waters, waiting patiently for its revivifying powers to work their magic.
‘What is going on?’ Pelham asked, when after several minutes there was no indication of movement from the waterside group. He noticed that they formed a straight line, following the shore, rather than an arc. ‘They’re not watching anything at all.’
The off-shore haze was now only five hundred yards away, obscuring the contours of the huge swells. Completely opaque, the water looked like warm oil, a few wavelets now and then dissolving into greasy bubbles as they expired limply on the sand, intermingled with bits of refuse and old cigarette cartons. Nudging the shore like this, the sea resembled an enormous pelagic beast roused from its depths and blindly groping at the sand.
‘Mildred, I’m going down to the water for a moment.’ Pelham stood up. ‘There’s something curious—’ He broke off, pointing to the beach on the other side of the terrace. ‘Look! There’s another group. What on earth—?’
Again, as everyone watched, this second body of spectators formed by the water’s edge seventy-five yards from the terrace. Altogether some two hundred people were silently assembling along the shore-line, gazing out across the sea in front of them. Peiham found himself cracking his knuckles, then clasped the rail with both hands, as much to restrain himself from joining them. Only the congestion on the beach held him back.
This time the interest of the crowd passed in a few moments, and the murmur of background noise resumed.
‘Heaven knows what they’re doing.’ Mildred turned her back on the group. ‘There are more of them over there. They must be waiting for something.’
Sure enough, half a dozen similar groups were now forming by the water’s edge, at almost precise one hundred yard intervals. Pelham scanned the far ends of the bay for any signs of a motor boat. He glanced at his watch. It was nearly 3:30. ‘They can’t be waiting for anything,’ he said, trying to control his nervousness. Below the table his feet twitched a restless tattoo, gripping for purchase on the sandy cement. ‘The only thing expected is the satellite, and no one will see that anyway. There must be something in the water.’ At the mention of the satellite he remembered Sherrington again. ‘Mildred, don’t you feel—’ Before he could continue the man behind him stood up with a curious lurch, as if hoping to reach the rail, and tipped the sharp edge of his seat into Pelham’s back. For a moment, as he struggled to steady the man, Pelham was enveloped in a rancid smell of sweat and stale beer. He saw the glazed focus in the other’s eyes, his rough unshaved chin and open mouth like a muzzle, pointing with a sort of impulsive appetite towards the sea.