Ghosts in the Morning - By Will Thurmann Page 0,8
programmes,’ I replied, and I could hear Graham coughing nervously. We both knew I had seen what he was doing, but neither of us was prepared to admit it. We both felt the cringing embarrassment, although it didn’t seem fair that I did. We never spoke of it again, and now, whenever I had to come downstairs late and Graham wasn’t in bed, I would step loudly on the stairs, and I would yawn or cough.
I scanned the movies and settled on a romantic comedy. Light and fluffy, it would pass the time, and it didn’t go on too late. I wanted to be in bed before Graham came home.
***
The sound of Graham brushing his teeth woke me. I swore silently into the pillow, knowing that I would remain awake for a few hours now. Once Graham had started snoring, I would flick my bedside lamp on and read for a bit. Graham always brushed his teeth too vigorously, the noise was like cat scratches down a post. Worse still was the antiseptic mouthwash. I could hear the glug as the cap of the mouthwash bottle was filled – he was annoyingly precise about the measurement of the mouthwash, and I had never understood why, it’s not like a little bit less or a little bit more was going to make any difference – then he sucked it in through his teeth. I hated that sound. Uncle Peter used to make that sound, he used to suck back the saliva when...I closed my eyes and tried to get back to sleep.
Chapter 4
For once, the weather forecast had been spot on. The storm had hit with a vengeance, unleashing its wrath across the island.
I was standing on a large rock to the west of the Corbière lighthouse. The lighthouse had stood proudly on the southwest corner of Jersey for over 130 years, its concrete shell proudly withstanding the battering of four daily tides. I remembered a teacher, on a school visit, told us that Corbière translated as ‘the place where crows congregate’, which always seemed ironic given that the place was dominated by seagulls. There was a flock of seagulls now, sat imperiously on the rock, arrogant in their ability to withstand the fierce wind. I tried to think what you called a group of crows, it wasn’t a congregation of crows...maybe a parliament...
This was one of my favourite places in the island. I loved it here, especially on a windy day, when the swells lifted the white horses proudly into the air, and the raspy sting of seawater blasted my face. There was no better spot in the island to view the power of the sea as it flexed its salty muscle. It made everything else in life seem so small, so insignificant, the ocean put things in their rightful perspective. There were powerful people littered through history who believed themselves to be strong, superior, masters of the universe, gods even. But they were nothing, nothing when compared to the monstrous majesty of the sea. It was at its brutal finest right now.
Spray soaked my face, and I licked my lips. Wind flapped viciously at my coat and pushed at my back, threatening to topple me from the rock into the foamy scum below. I breathed deeply, relishing the loneliness. The weather was unpleasant to most, and it was a weekday, so everyone was at work or at home, tucked into their cosy, heated boxes, missing nature’s show.
Then I noticed a man clambering across the rocks nearby. I squinted behind him, at the direction he had come from and saw his car parked at the side of the road. At the beginning of the number plate was a red ‘H’, signalling that it was a hire car. A solitary tourist. H e was walking towards me, but he wasn’t looking at me. A pair of binoculars swung from his neck and he was gazing up at the foreboding sky. A birdwatcher then...a twitcher. People laughed at them sometimes, pigeon-holing their hobby alongside trainspotting, but that was wrong. ‘Please don’t put the birdwatchers in a pigeon-hole’, I said to myself. My laugh was whipped away by the wind. I liked birds, I loved to watch them as they soared on the swirls and eddies of thermal currents, they always seemed to embody the ultimate freedom. I wished I was a bird sometimes.
The man got closer, but he was still looking up. He was rotund and red-faced, though whether that was from