Pincher Martin by Philippa Gregory

Author:Philippa Gregory [William Golding]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571309191
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 1965-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

8

There were tons of the stuff hanging round the rock, floating or coiled down under water by Prospect Cliff.

“Men make patterns.”

Seaweed, to impose an unnatural pattern on nature, a pattern that would cry out to any rational beholder​—Look! Here is thought. Here is man!

“The best form would be a single indisputable line drawn at right angles to the trenches, piled so high that it will not only show a change of colour but even throw a shadow of its own. I must make it at least a yard wide and it must be geometrically straight. Later I will fill up one of the trenches and turn the upright into a cross. Then the rock will become a hot cross bun.”

Looking down towards the three Rocks he planned the line to descend across the trenches, parallel more or less to the High Street. The line would start at the Red Lion and come up to the Dwarf. It would be an operation.

He went quickly down the High Street: and now that he had found a job with point, he was muttering without knowing why.

“Hurry! Hurry!”

Then his ears began to fill with the phantom buzzing of planes. He kept looking up and fell once, cutting himself. Only when he was already pulling at the frondy weed by Food Cliff did he pause.

“Don’t be a fool. Take it easy. There’s no point in looking up because you can do nothing to attract attention. Only a clot would go dancing and waving his shirt because he thought there was a plane about five miles up.”

He craned back his head and searched the sky but found nothing besides blueness and sun. He held his breath and listened and heard nothing but the inner, mingled humming of his own life, nothing outside but the lap and gurgle of water. He straightened his neck and stood there thinking. He went back to the crevice. He stripped naked and spread his clothing in the sun. He arranged each item carefully to one side of where the line of seaweed would lie. He went back to the Red Lion and looked down at the space between the Red Lion and the three rocks. He turned round and lowered himself over the edge. The water was colder than he remembered, colder than the fresh water that he drank. He ground his teeth and forced himself down and the rock was so sharp against his knees that he reopened the wounds of the first day. His waist was on the rock between his hands and he was groaning. He could not feel bottom and the weed round his calves was colder than the water. The cold squeezed as the water had done in the open sea, so that he was panic-stricken at the memory. He made a high, despairing sound, pushed himself clear of the rock and fell. The water took him with a freezing hand. He opened his eyes and weed was lashing before them. His head broke the surface and he struck out frantically for the rock.

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