Take me to the sea!, W. cries every time he visits. W. has to see the sea! Our North Sea is very different to his Atlantic, he says. It even looks colder, he says, as it comes into view behind the Priory.
Sometimes we pay to enter the Priory, so W. can see the weathered gravestones whose names are no longer legible, and inspect what's left of the bunkers, which are a kind of cousin to those at Jennycliff, with empty sockets where there were once gun-placements. But today we're on a mission. W. has to get air into his lungs, he says. And he needs a drink!
We follow the road round to the Park Hotel, where we are served by an old waiter in a tuxedo. Chips and mayonnaise in the sun, watched by an old Bassett hound, head on paws. Two pints of beer arrive on a tray, the waiter with a white towel over his forearm. To the sea! cries W. as our glasses clink.
A trip of this kind should be part of the rhythm of my day, W. says. It should be a reward, a bonus. The sea, the sun – it's what should strength to gather in you again. To clear your head for work. For work! After such a day, W. says, he longs for nothing other than his study. It's time to read! He wants to draw the cawl of scholarship over his head …
But for me, who, as he knows, knows nothing of rhythm, nothing of steadiness, it's but part of the hubbub, meaningless just as everything that happens to me is meaningless. 'What can you make of all this?', W. says. 'The sea, the sunshine: what significance can it have for you?'
It must seem part of the pell-mell, he says. Part of the chaos I can barely hold back. In the end, I am a victim of events, rather than their master. Things happen to me; they happen again: what more sense can they have than that?
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