Woman Who Walked Into Sea, The by Douglas-Home Mark

Author:Douglas-Home, Mark
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sandstone Press

Chapter 12

On the map, North Bay resembled the profile of a human gargoyle. Its northern headland was ridged and hooked and had the appearance of a large, bony nose. The southern jutted out like a protruding and sharp chin, and the bay itself took the form of a toothless mouth which could no longer open wide. Standing on the hooked nose, Cal estimated the channel between the tip of the northern headland and the protrusion of the chin at less than 60 metres, a narrow opening for flotsam travelling north-east with the flow tide and returning on the ebb. In this and other respects, North Bay couldn’t have been more dissimilar to its southern neighbour. Not only was it sheltered, exposed only to westerlies, it had a small beach which sloped into the sea and was protected on the landward-side by a collar of boulders. South Bay, by contrast, was open to the elements, vulnerable to any wind between south-south-west to north-north-west, with a beach which was wide, flat and long. Instead of boulders, its sweep of sand was bordered by low-lying dunes.

A length of blue rope caught Cal’s attention. It was marooned in a stagnant pool among the rocks below him. He looked around for more debris. A section of white plastic piping protruded from a tangle of seaweed by the shore but otherwise the northern headland appeared to be almost flotsam and litter-free. He skirted the bay, followed the high water mark across the beach, treading on a blue and black mosaic of broken mussel shells, until he was among the boulders by the southern shore. He noticed a detergent bottle, some bleached wooden planks, sections of rope, the remains of a lobster pot, an orange buoy (which was half-buried under seaweed) as well as two white carrier bags. Considering Duncan Boyd only cleared the neighbouring beach, there was little enough. Still there was more debris at that part of North Bay than any other: support for Cal’s theory about the possibility of a slack water eddy spinning into the open mouth and of the breeze nudging flotsam ashore where the eddy’s tail brought it closest to land, near to where he was standing. He made a mental note to quiz Duncan about whether North Bay had altered much in the last 26 years; whether the headlands had eroded significantly; whether there had been any other changes affecting the flow of the tides; whether it would have been more likely for flotsam to wash up on the small beach then than it was now. (Now was unlikely in his opinion.)

He made his way up a chute of loose stones to the top of the south headland, a plateau of grass interspersed with grey slabs of rock. His new vantage point provided a view of South Bay, the dunes and the road-end where he had left his pickup. Another vehicle was parked there too and three men were walking from it. As he watched, they spread out. One stayed on the dune path, the other two on the beach but fifty metres apart.

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