There were a few very warm days and nights in the west last spring. It
was at the time of the full moon.
There were so few clouds in the sky that when the sun went down it found
no canvas on which to paint its picture. So it went down unpictured into
a bank of grey heat that hid the horizon of the sea, and no one thought
it worth watching except a man coming alone along the cliff from the
northeast. The moon came up and filled the quarry with ghosts, and with
confused and blinded memories. The sea advanced in armies of great smooth
waves, but under the moon the wind went down, and the waves went down,
and there was less and less sound in the air.
One man watched the dwindling waves troop into the cove near the quarry.
There was only one pair of eyes in the whole world that tried that night
to trace in the air the shape of a drowned house. There was only one
shadow by the quarry for the moon to cast upon the thyme. There was no
voice but the voice of the sea. No passing but the peaceful passing of
the lambs disturbed the thistles and the foxgloves.
The sea rose like a wall across the night, a wall that shut half of life
away. The sky fell like a curtain on the land, but there was no piece to
be played, so the curtain was never raised.
One man waited all the night through, like a child waiting for the
fairies. The sea grew calmer and calmer, the tide went down, and the cove
spread out its long sands like fingers into the sea. There was a shadow
on the sands below the quarry, and it may have been the shadow of a
house. And perhaps when the tide came up at dawn it devoured old
footprints upon the shore, the prints of feet that will never come back.
I think that when the moon fled away into oblivion, it was not only the
moon that fled, but also a bubble world, full of dead secrets.
How foolish to wait for the culmination of a secret story! How foolish
of a man to wait all night for the redemption of an old promise, for the
resurrection of a forgotten romance! There are no secret stories, there
is no secret world, there are no secret friends. The House by the Sea has
been drowned, and even its ghosts have forgotten it. After all, there was
nothing to remember. The gate to the House is barred, not by a lock but
by a laugh. Reality and not adversity has blown the bubble away.
I remember the moment when Jay found four-fifths of her life proved
false. I remember that she besieged the world with tears; I remember that
she bruised her hands against the iron gate. How foolish to bruise one's
hands against nothingness!