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So he had agreed to accept an invitation from the Warden at St. Anselm’s while being uneasily aware that his mother thought he would have shown a more generous spirit by offering to stay and help with the twins.
    The college had been half empty, with only a few overseas students choosing to remain. They and the priests had taken trouble to make his stay happy, setting up a wicket on the stretch of specially mown grass behind the church and bowling to him indefatigably. He remembered that the food had been greatly superior to school meals and, indeed, to those at the rectory, and he had liked his guest-room even though it gave no view of the sea. But he had most enjoyed the solitary walks, south towards the mere or north towards Lowestoft, the freedom to use the library, the prevailing but never oppressive silence,the assurance that he could take possession of every new day in unquestioned liberty.
    And then, during his second visit and on the 3rd of August, there had been Sadie.
    Father Martin had said, “Mrs. Millson’s granddaughter is coming to stay with her in her cottage. She’s about your age I think, Adam. It might be company for you.” Mrs. Millson had been the cook, even then in her sixties and certainly long since retired.
    And Sadie had been company of a sort. She was a thin fifteen-year-old with fine corn-coloured hair which hung down each side of a narrow face, and small eyes of a remarkable grey flecked with green which on their first meeting stared at him with a resentful intensity. But she seemed happy enough to walk with him, seldom speaking, occasionally picking up a stone to hurl into the sea or suddenly spurting ahead with fierce determination, then turning to wait for him, rather like a puppy chasing after a ball.
    He remembered one day after a storm, when the sky had cleared but the wind was still high and great waves were crashing in with as much vehemence as they had during the dark hours of the night. They had sat side by side in the shelter of a groyne, passing a bottle of lemonade from mouth to mouth. He had written her a poem—more, he remembered, an exercise in trying to imitate Eliot (his most recent enthusiasm) than a tribute to genuine feeling. She had read it with furrowed brow, the small eyes almost invisible.
    “You wrote this?”
    “Yes. It’s for you. A poem.”
    “No it isn’t. It doesn’t rhyme. A boy in our class—Billy Price—writes poems. They always rhyme.”
    He said indignantly, “It’s a different kind of poem.”
    “No it isn’t. If it’s a poem the words at the end of the lines have to rhyme. Billy Price says so.”
    Later he had come to believe that Billy Price had a point. He got up, tore the paper into small pieces and dropped them on the wet sand, watching and waiting for the next tumbling wave to suck them into oblivion. So much, he thought, for poetry’s famed erotic power. But Sadie’s female mind, in achieving itselemental ends, operated a less sophisticated, more atavistic ploy. She said, “Bet you daren’t dive off the end of that groyne.”
    Billy Price, he thought, would no doubt have dared to dive off the end of the groyne in addition to writing verse which rhymed at the end of each line. Without speaking, he got up and tore off his shirt. Wearing only his khaki shorts, he balanced on the groyne, paused, walked over a slither of seaweed to the end and dived headlong into the turbulent sea. It was less deep than he thought and he felt the scrape of pebbles rasping his palms before he surfaced. Even in August the North Sea was cold, but the shock of the chill was only temporary. What followed was terrifying. It felt as if he were in the grasp of some uncontrollable force, as if strong hands were seizing him by the shoulders and forcing him backwards and under. Spluttering, he tried to strike out, but the shore was suddenly obliterated by a great wall of water. It crashed over him and he felt himself drawn back, then tossed upwards into daylight.