Read In Another Country for Free Online

was at liberty merely to imagine. The background noise of space, for example, the aural context of all the galactic debris still dispersing. So Lou spun ideas, as any human would, to try to say what the sound of the cave was like; but in the midst of her ideas, despite their interference, she knew with a thrill of horror, that what she was listening to, though nameless, was familiar. So reading a poem, often what dawns on you is a thing you knew already but had forgotten or didn’t know well enough and now the lines with a vengeance will remind you and make you know it this time close and true.
    Owen looked mesmerized, entranced, as though his first and remembered deep impression was deepening further now and more than he could bear. Lou touched his arm, and he started. She pointed towards the daylight at the mouth of the cave and after a little moment, which seemed not a reluctance but a coming to, he nodded and followed her. They went out to the brink and sat there looking over the open land, still sunny, down to where the little town must be.
    What did you do when you came here last time, Lou asked, all those years ago? I ran away, said Owen. I wanted to sleep in the cave, I had ideas of that sort. But as soon as I lay down there was only that noise behind that slit. I couldn’t bear it, so I decamped. Lou said nothing. After a while Owen said, I was going to ask what you would like to do. If we left now we could be back in town before dark and perhaps find a train or a bus. Is that what you want? Lou asked. If you were here on your own again, what would you do? I don’t think I’d be here on my own, said Owen. But if I were, I think I should try to stay. Then we’ll stay, said Lou.
    Where they sat, the water toppling over made quite a loud and cheerful noise; but behind them, as they watched the shadow extending slowly over the open land towards their heights, the noise inside the cave became, if not louder, certainly more insistent. Why did you want to listen to it again? Lou asked. Because, Owen answered, I’ve often — and in some periods constantly — wanted to live as though I could always hear that cave. I don’t want to live forgetting there’s a noise like that. I mean, in some ways it isn’t so very mysterious. Somewhere inside there must be a waterfall, quite a big one. Very beautiful no doubt, if things are beautiful that nobody can see. And what we can hear is the chute, the impact, the milling, the overflowing of water through tunnels till it finds that slit. All magnified, echoing, distorted. After heavy rain it would sound different. After no rain different again. But essentially the same, for all its variations, and always strange. Like the flight of the stuff of the universe: you might grasp the principle, but the act of it, the working out, is infinitely strange. But I can talk like this because we are sitting here together facing away and the sunlight will last a while longer. Up close, in the dark, when I was a boy I understood nothing at all, I heard the noise, only that. And it would be the same today, I guess, up close in there on my own. I thought we’d sleep in the mouth, said Lou, nearer the open air. I thought the same, said Owen. Still it will be cold and loud.
    The shadow was climbing. They moved along to the far corner of the cave where, as you might say, upper lip and lower met. Owen dug out from his rucksack first a bag of food, then an old army blanket. This latter resource Lou smiled at. I’ve got something similar, she said. From Marks & Spencer’s. Not so serious, but very handy. She produced it. We can lie on that and have yours over us. She went back to the stream, filled her water bottle, and returning saw, first, that he had also fished out a bottle of wine, and, secondly, that, above his head, under the coping of stone and fern and moss, a wren had gone in to nest. The smallness of the bird — she could almost feel its