The small boy was still hopping around on the grass in front of us.
“When’s the diver coming up again?” he said.
“Not yet, sonny,” said the coast-guard.
A woman in a pink striped frock and a hair-net came across the grass towards us. “Charlie? Charlie? Where are you?” she called.
“Here’s your mother coming to give you what-for,” said the coast-guard.
“I’ve seen the diver, Mum,” shouted the boy.
The woman nodded to us and smiled. She did not know me. She was a holiday-maker from Kerrith. “The excitement all seems to be over doesn’t it?” she said; “they are saying down on the cliff there the ship will be there for days.”
“They’re waiting for the diver’s report,” said the coast-guard.
“I don’t know how they get them to go down under the water like that,” said the woman; “they ought to pay them well.”
“They do that,” said the coast-guard.
“I want to be a diver, Mum,” said the small boy.
“You must ask your Daddy, dear,” said the woman, laughing at us. “It’s a lovely spot up here, isn’t it?” she said to me. “We brought a picnic lunch, never thinking it would turn foggy and we’d have a wreck into the bargain. We were just thinking of going back to Kerrith when the rockets went off under our noses, it seemed. I nearly jumped out of my skin. ‘Why, whatever’s that?’ I said to my husband. ‘That’s a distress signal,’ he said; ‘let’s stop and see the fun.’ There’s no dragging him away; he’s as bad as my little boy. I don’t see anything in it myself.”
“No, there’s not much to see now,” said the coast-guard.
“Those are nice-looking woods over there; I suppose they’re private,” said the woman.
The coast-guard coughed awkwardly, and glanced at me. I began eating a piece of grass and looked away.
“Yes, that’s all private in there,” he said.
“My husband says all these big estates will be chopped up in time and bungalows built,” said the woman. “I wouldn’t mind a nice little bungalow up here facing the sea. I don’t know that I’d care for this part of the world in the winter though.”
“No, it’s very quiet here winter times,” said the coast-guard.
I went on chewing my piece of grass. The little boy kept running round in circles. The coast-guard looked at his watch. “Well, I must be getting on,” he said; “good afternoon!” He saluted me, and turned back along the path towards Kerrith. “Come on, Charlie, come and find Daddy,” said the woman.
She nodded to me in friendly fashion, and sauntered off to the edge of the cliff, the little boy running at her heels. A thin man in khaki shorts and a striped blazer waved to her. They sat down by a clump of gorse bushes and the woman began to undo paper packages.
I wished I could lose my own identity and join them. Eat hard-boiled eggs and potted meat sandwiches, laugh rather loudly, enter their conversation, and then wander back with them during the afternoon to Kerrith and paddle on the beach, run races across the stretch of sand, and so to their lodgings and have shrimps for tea. Instead of which I must go back alone through the woods to Manderley and wait for Maxim. And I did not know what we should say to one another, how he would look at me, what would be his voice. I went on sitting there on the cliff. I was not hungry. I did not think about lunch.
More people came and wandered over the cliffs to look at the ship. It made an excitement for the afternoon. There was nobody I knew. They were all holiday-makers from Kerrith. The sea was glassy calm. The gulls no longer wheeled overhead, they had settled on the water a little distance from the ship. More pleasure boats appeared during the afternoon. It must be a field day for Kerrith boat-men. The diver came up and then went down again. One of the tugs steamed away while the other still stood by. The harbormaster went back in his gray motorboat, taking some men with him, and the diver who had come to the surface for the second time. The crew of the ship leaned against the side throwing scraps to the gulls, while visitors in pleasure-boats rowed slowly round the ship. Nothing happened at all. It was dead low water now, and the ship was heeled at an angle, the propeller showing clean. Little ridges of white cloud formed in the western sky and the sun became pallid. It was still very hot. The woman in the pink striped frock with the little boy got up and wandered off along the path towards Kerrith, the man in the shorts following with the picnic basket.