cliff top that now formed the base of the promontory, and he stepped at last onto the sand. This wasn't the soft sand of a tropical isle, but rather the grit produced over eons as a frozen land of permafrost warmed till slow-moving landslides left coarse gravel in their wake, and water forever beating upon these stones reduced them to hard little grains that glittered in sunlight but shone dull otherwise, grey and dun coloured, unforgiving upon flesh and abrasive to the touch.
To his right was the Sea Pit, high tide filling it with new water now, nearly submersing it in order to do so. To his left was the tributary of the River Cas and beyond it what remained of the Casvelyn Canal. In front of him was the sea, restless and demanding. It drew him forward.
He set his board on the sand and donned his boots and gloves. He squatted for a moment - a huddled figure in black with his back to Casvelyn - and he watched the phosphorescence in the waves. He'd been to the beach at night as a youth, but those visits had not been for a surf. With their surfing done for the day, they'd make a fire ring. When embers were all that was left of the blaze, they'd pair off and if the tide was low, the great sea caves of Pengelly Cove beckoned.
There they'd make love. On a blanket or not. Semiclothed or nude. Drunk, slightly tipsy, or sober.
She'd been younger then. She'd been his. She was what he wanted, all that he wanted. She had known it as well, and the trouble had come from that knowing.
He rose and approached the water with his board. He had no leash for it, but that didn't matter. If it got away from him, it got away from him. Like so much else in his life, keeping the board close by should he fall from it was a concern beyond his control just now.
His feet and ankles felt the shock of the cold first and then his legs and thighs and upwards. It would take a few moments for his body temperature to warm the water within his wet suit, and in the meantime the bitter cold of it reminded him he was alive.
Thigh deep, he eased onto the board and began to paddle out through the white water towards the right-hand reef break. The spray hit his face and the waves washed over him. He thought -
briefly - he might paddle forever, straight into morning, paddle until he was so far from shore that Cornwall itself would be only a memory. But instead, bleakly governed by love and by duty, he stopped beyond the reef at the swells, and there he straddled his board. He sat first with his back to the shore, looking out at the vast and undulating sea. Then he turned the board round and saw the lights of Casvelyn: the line of tall lamps shining whitely along the promontory and then the amber glow behind the curtained windows of the houses in town, like the gaslights of the nineteenth century, or the open fires of an earlier time.
The swells were seductive, offering him a hypnotic rhythm that was as comforting as it was false. It felt, he thought, like a return to the womb. One could stretch out on the board, bob in the sea, and sleep forever. But swells broke - the sheer volume of the water collapsing in on itself -
as the landmass beneath it sloped up into the shore. There was danger here as well as seduction.
One had to act or one submitted to the force of the waves.
He wondered if, after all these years, he would recognise the moment: that confluence of shape, force, and curl telling the surfer it was time to drop in. But some things ultimately were second nature, and he found that taking a wave was one of them. Understanding and experience coalesced into skill, and the passage of time had not robbed him of that.
The peak built, and he rose with it: paddling first, then up on one knee, and then erect. No deck grip at the tail of the board, holding the back foot in position, because on this board - on his board - such a device had never been placed. He skimmed for a second across the wave's shoulder. He dropped into its face. He carved, getting high and fast, with his muscles