Then he got to his feet and walked back to the fire.
*
The sea was breathing deeply like someone sound asleep, each wave a soft exhalation through its open mouth. In the silence between waves Moses could hear the softer breathing of the people all around him.
He had been trying to get to sleep himself, thinking that if he synchronised his breathing with the rhythm of the waves, if he harnessed himself to all that natural hypnotic power, then maybe he would drift off.
No such luck.
His eyes stung so much they wouldn’t stay closed. The coldness of the stones soaked up into his hip. He looked around for the blanket Gloria had brought down from the car, but it had disappeared.
Jesus, he ached all over. Skinned knuckles on both hands. His left shin caked with blood. A jarring pain in his cheek. He rubbed the back of his neck and his hand came away sticky with tar.
He just hoped Eddie had come off worse.
The sky had diluted — black to grey. Instructions for the creation of dawn: just add water to the colour of the night. Not a hint of sunshine anywhere. It looked as if the weather had broken.
He glanced down at Gloria. She was still asleep, burrowed into the bay-shape he had made with his body when he lay down, her head resting in the hollow between his hip and his rib-cage. She had curled up very tight, like a fist. There was oil on the soles of her shoes, and on her neck, just below her ear, he saw two tiny moles that he had never noticed before. Dracula scars.
‘Gloria?’ He ruffled her hair. Her mouth twitched, but she didn’t wake up.
‘Gloria?’
She jack-knifed into a sitting position, her eyes wide open. ‘I was dreaming,’ she said.
‘What were you dreaming about?’ he asked her as they trudged across the beach.
She frowned. ‘Someone had hidden my voice. Someone had stolen my voice while I was sleeping and hidden it somewhere.’
They walked up the steps, their heads bent, the wood creaking under their feet. The grey air flapped around them like damp canvas. Their clothes were stiff, sticky with salt.
‘Why do I feel so cold?’ Gloria spoke through mauve lips. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been so cold.’
When they reached the top they paused, looked back down. It was high tide. Grey sky. Grey sea. There was no way of telling where the horizon was, nothing to suggest a division of any kind. A foghorn groaned in the distance. An explanation there, perhaps. Grey sea. Grey beach. At the base of the cliffs, a splash of colour, the only splash of colour visible. The reds, greens, blues of sleeping-bags. Sudden and out of place, like something spilt or dropped. An accident. The scattered pieces of a puzzle.
‘Come on,’ Moses said. ‘It’ll be warmer in the car.’
On their way across the car-park they passed Eddie’s car. Moses peered in through the windscreen. He smiled at what he saw.
‘Hey,’ he called out. ‘Come and look at this.’
Gloria stood ten yards away, her hands tucked into her armpits. ‘What is it? I thought you said we could sleep.’
She trailed back to Eddie’s car and looked through the window. Eddie, Vince and Debra were sitting inside. All three sat perfectly upright in their seats with their eyes closed. They were all fast asleep.
‘So?’ Gloria said.
‘What does it remind you of?’
Gloria shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Old Dinwoodie.’
‘Old who?’
Moses stared at her. ‘Old Dinwoodie. You know. It was just before his bike went off the road. He was driving along with his eyes shut. Don’t you remember?’
‘I didn’t see that.’ Gloria turned away.
Moses’s smile had narrowed, but a trace of it still lingered as he followed her to the car. Some part of him was immensely pleased that she had seen Eddie sitting there with his mouth open like that.
*
He ached into consciousness again, his forehead pressed against cold glass. He had lost all feeling in his right leg. He opened his mouth in the shape of a scream as he shifted and felt the life begin to crawl back through his skin. Christ, what a night.
He wiped the window with the less painful of his two hands. The mobile toilet door had swung open: it banged repeatedly on the tinny grey drum of its own side wall. Mist clung to the summit of the field beyond. Two or three dismal sheep grazed beside the wire fence. In front of the café, a few people in sweaters clutched white china mugs. They looked like the victims of some minor natural disaster. Nobody seemed to be talking. At least the café had opened. That was something.
He heard Gloria yawn from beneath her blanket on the back seat. He turned to look at her. Ouch: his neck. First her hair emerged, then an ear, and finally the rest of her face, exhausted, but still beautiful.
‘Don’t look at me,’ she muttered.
He watched her in the mirror instead. Smeared mascara. Blue crescents under her eyes. She looked bruised.
‘Moses,’ came her small voice, ‘d’you think there’s any chance of a cup of coffee?’
He smiled. ‘Yes, I think there’s a chance.’
He got out of the car and stretched.
During the forties and fifties the café must have been quite safe. A place to take the family at weekends. A beauty spot of sorts. And even now, on a calm day, you could sit at one of those unsteady metal tables on the terrace and listen to the sea rustling over the pebbles below and believe that everything was all right. But what about the raw winter nights when storms blew in, and the waves hacked and munched at the base of the cliffs, and the black gap gaped and beckoned? There was fear in that old place as it watched the worn grass diminish year by year, as the sixty-foot drop edged nearer and nearer. He could almost hear the death-rattle of those loose sheets of glass, the teeth of the café chattering.
A few tables and chairs had taken up positions outdoors. They had been painted strange garish colours: mustard-yellow, hot-pink, lime-green. It was like an exhibition of freaks, a zoo of four-legged creatures with no heads. One of the tables was psychedelic mauve. It stood apart from the rest of the furniture as if embarrassed or shunned. Angled away from the sun-terrace and halfway to the cliff-edge, it gave the impression that, any moment now, it might break into an ungainly blundering run and hurl itself into the void.
Table kills itself.
On his way into the café, Moses passed Eddie. Eddie looked up, but nothing registered on his face. He had a split lip and a smear of oil on his forehead. His grazed hands dangled in his lap. He obviously wasn’t going to explain what last night had been about.
Moses carried two cups of coffee out on to the grass and handed one to Gloria. She was sitting on the mauve table, elbows on her knees. He suddenly remembered the man with the dyed black hair and the vermilion shirt, the man who laughed like a train, and smiled to himself.
‘I bet I know who painted this table,’ he said.
Gloria held her cup close to her lips and stared at the horizon, her face in profile against the dull sky. Her mood had altered in the last five minutes. It was as if she had woken up without thinking and had now remembered something depressing.
He asked her if she was all right.
She nodded.
She found her cigarettes and lit one. She let the smoke drift out of her mouth without seeming to notice.
He asked her if she wanted to go.
She shrugged. It must have meant yes, though, because she threw her cigarette away and picked up her bag.