‘The way you tell it,’ she said, ‘it sounds nice. But do you think that’s how it really is?’
‘Of course,’ he nodded, and quickly checked himself. ‘In my story, anyway. I mean, how would I know what it’s really like?’
‘I was just being silly,’ she told him. ‘Of course it’s not really like that. Anyway, I still don’t see why these dead people would want to talk to your, er, necroscope. Wouldn’t he be a distraction? Wouldn’t he annoy them, butting in like that on all their great schemes?’
‘No,’ Harry shook his head. ‘On the contrary. It’s human nature, see? What’s the good of doing something wonderful if you can’t tell or show anyone what you’ve done? That’s why they enjoy talking to the necroscope. He can appreciate their genius. He’s the only one who can do that! Also, he’s sympathetic – he wants to know about their wonderful discoveries, the fantastic inventions they’ve designed, which won’t be invented in the real world for a thousand years!’
Brenda suddenly saw something in what he’d said. ‘But that’s a wonderful idea, Harry! It’s not morbid at all, as I first thought. Why, the necroscope could “invent” their inventions for them! He could build their bridges, make their music, write their unwritten masterpieces! Is that what’s going to happen? In your story, I mean?’
He turned his face away, stood gazing far out to sea, and said: ‘Something like that, I suppose. That’s what I haven’t worked out yet. . .’
Then for a while they were silent, and shortly afterwards they came to Crimdon and stopped for a coffee in a little cafe at the foot of the beach banks.
Harry lay sleeping on his bed, stark naked, the sheets thrown back. It was a very warm evening and the sun, sinking, continued to stream its golden fire in through the high windows of his tiny flat. Seeing the fine sheen of sweat where it made his brow damp, Brenda drew the thin curtains across the garret windows to cut down on the sunlight. As the shadow fell across his face he groaned and mumbled something, but Brenda couldn’t catch what he said. Quietly dressing, she thought back on the day. She thought back to other times, too, allowing her memory full rein as she examined the years she and Harry had known each other. Today had been good. And at last Harry had talked to her about. . . well, about things. He’d opened up a little and got some of it off his chest and out of his system. And since their long talk about his story he’d been a lot easier in himself, happy almost. Just what it would take to make him truly happy – Brenda could hardly imagine the nature of such a thing. He said it was that he had ‘a lot on his mind’. A lot of what? His writing? Possibly. But she had never known him to be truly happy. Or if he had been it hadn’t shown much . . .
But there, she’d side-tracked herself. She went back to today.
After Crimdon they’d walked on for another mile to a more or less deserted part of the beach where they’d gone swimming in their underwear. From a distance no one would be able to tell; it would be thought they wore costumes. After a little while, as they fooled about in the water, some old beach-combing tramp had come on the scene and it had been time to go. Dressing before the old boy could get really close, they’d dried out as they covered the last leg of their walk. In Hartlepool, a bus ride from the old part of the town to the ‘new’ had carried them almost to the door of the three-storey Victorian house where Harry had his garret flat, and there Brenda had made sandwiches for them before they’d showered and made love. The sex they’d shared had been delicious, with both of them still tasting a little of the sea’s salt, all glowing from the sun and radiating their heat, and all seeming very right and natural. She liked Harry best in the summer, for then he wasn’t so pale and his thin frame seemed somehow more muscular.