Gravely Raeburn distributed the ingots. More effective and more hopeful that was than the Flora act which Elsa had contemplated. There was some conversation. Elsa appeared to dismiss the party and to bless them. She stood on the rock, still and statuesque, until they had crossed the railway embankment and were out of sight. I appeared from the mud. If there had been anyone to see us it would have been thought that she had summoned her tame sea monster.
She was overcome with the splendour of her own impersonation, nervous as an actress in the wings after triumph in a profoundly emotional scene. I wished I had champagne and half a florist’s shop to go with my congratulations.
‘Nearly disaster! So nearly!’ she cried. ‘The rod rose too far out of the water. I covered it by flapping my sleeves. Then you must have dragged it down again. Thank God we have got away with it and they’ve gone!’
‘But how did they think you would get home?’
‘Saints don’t take cars, darling. Think of me sitting in the back and chatting all the way to Broom Lodge! What shall we do?’
The ebb was running dangerously under the rising moon. It was impossible to swim across, but Bullo with Marrin’s two boats on their moorings was less than half a mile away.
‘We’ll swipe the rowing boat. I can make it look as if the painter had chafed and broken.’
The tide swept us from the pill, round the sands and softly under Hock Cliff where I chose the steep beach of shale, its top just showing, rather than the shelf of rock which I knew too well. I set the boat adrift and we began to walk along the embankment towards the track where I had left my car, over grass, here long and studded with wild flowers, while the power of the fast ebb slid by our feet without sound or ripple. Her robe was wet and heavy at the hem. She took it off, flung it over her shoulder and after a few strides let it drop to the ground.
I remember how in that moment desire for her was most strangely mixed with awe, for she looked like a spirit risen from the depths of the Severn, still impatient for more worship.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
Copyright © 1981 by Geoffrey Household
Cover design by Drew Padrutt
978-1-5040-0652-1
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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