‘You don’t need camouflage for limpets.’ She had a point.
As he headed off the beach, David stopped to watch the sand martins stall and speed along the brow of the collapsing grey cliff.
He had been amongst those who had torn down the nets the council put up some years ago to stop the birds nesting. Contributing to erosion, so they claimed! There was a whole ocean to hold back, but they opted to stop the half-ounce birds.
How long ago was that, he asked himself. Thirty something years? I was Leo’s age, back then.
David came up what the sea had left of the steps. The tidal defence panels to either side were bleached grey, had the compact, matted look he imagined the pelt of a seal must have. That they were moulded from re-formed blades of decommissioned wind turbines seemed right.
First, he thought, a myopic attempt to harness Nature, now a hopeful bid to hold her back. Let’s see how that goes. Some things you can stop, he thought, other things you can’t.
He turned a final time to nod to the beach. Remains of other buildings showed strewn through the sand. And as he looked out over the flat sea, he saw the flash at the horizon. The limpets clickety-clacked as he set down the bag and unbuttoned his pocket for the binoculars.
‘Well, look at that,’ he said out loud. He’d seen the bergs go by a few times now, and every time felt the same gentle shock as seeing the inside of a shell.
There on the horizon, a trio of tiny boats, and behind them, towed, an iceberg,
Of all the things, he thought. They must have brought that through the storm.
He’d promised himself he’d go and see the Dock a few hours up the coast but hadn’t yet. Wouldn’t now. Instead he’d traded in the promise. Don’t let this thing get the better of you until you see the giant city berg go by, when finally it does. Imagine the size that one will be! They’ll need a fleet of tugs . . .
There is a magnificence to the idea, he thinks. They’re breaking from the ice cap anyway. Why let them melt into the sea?
Like limpets, they’re a ready crop. With a bit of effort.
David emptied the bright bag into the dry old sink and turned off the radio. Helen did not like quiet. At least, did not like quiet when she was alone in the house.
If he’d been out, he could follow her through the rooms she’d been in, clicking off the radios the same way they used to follow the kids as toddlers, picking up the toys they’d dropped. He chided her fondly.
Decades ago he’d brought her music, on Compact Discs. Something you could actually hold, give. ‘It’s not the same,’ she’d said. ‘It makes me have to choose what I want to listen to. Anyway. It’s the talking. I like the talking.’ She was fine with quiet when he was there.
That was another thing he made himself not think about. In the tougher moments he imagined her rattling about the empty house like a wooden ball. Taking a radio to bed.
*
‘Leo!’ His son was early. ‘Look at you!’
David scratched the paddle of driftwood round the inside of the desalinator, cleaning the evaporation chamber.
‘How’s the beach?’ asked Leo.
‘I saw another iceberg!’
*
‘I’ve near forgotten how to cook them,’ Helen said, looking at the lamb chops.
‘From the new-farm,’ Leo said.
‘Just because you didn’t want to eat our limpets!’
Leo smiled.
‘It’s good to have it. Sheep. Milking cows. And they gave us chickens to look after ourselves.’
‘Chickens!’
Leo smiled again.
‘Our group of accommopods,’ he said. ‘We have a veg patch too.’
‘You’ll be running black market lamb chops up and down the country soon. No more of this bland stuff those superfarms grow. In the city’s soil.’
David looked at his son. A cohesion had come to him. When he’d left a few years past for work at the reservoir there’d been a jerkiness about him. A need to go. Always a mechanic, this one. Ruth, on the other hand, was a carer from the start. Had more time for living things.
It was no surprise when Leo took a job with the Water Train. The scale of the thing, the awesomeness of transporting that much water; the science of it! Leo looked strong, like he was stepping towards a life he understood.
‘And, you didn’t bring Cora! Afraid I’ll steal her from you? How did a grease monkey like you pull a woman with her brains? What is it that she does, again?’
‘She’s a thermo-fiuctuationist.’
‘What’s a thermo-fiuctuationist?’
‘What’s a grease monkey?’
‘I guess I’ll just grill them,’ Helen said, staring at the chops.
*
Having got used to living without red meat, the smell of the cooking lamb brought on a temporary insanity. David had to stand outside.
The windowsills were heavy with lumps of rock and fossils. The strange curl of an ammonite.
‘So you’re not going to move?’ said Leo.
Most people had opted to take the government relocation money.
‘Careful what you wish for. These lamb chops. You might find us bunking in with you.’
‘Dad,’ said Leo patiently.
David looked at the bleached log of driftwood riddled with shipworm, the tunnelled shells embedded in the wood. He and Leo had carried it up from the beach last time he was here.
‘Can non-workers move in?’ asked David.
‘Family, yes. In certain circumstances.’
David found he had to turn away from Leo then. He hadn’t been able to imagine Helen having to stay with Ruth, as Ruth would want. Couldn’t imagine her happy in the city. With Leo, she’d have space, and scale. And chickens, he tried to cheer himself.
The sun had not come out as it had threatened it might earlier, but a pleasant wind blew across the land bringing an earthy, wheaten smell that made the sea seem further away than it was.
‘I’ve watched the sun rise over this beach all my life,’ David said. ‘Why would we move, now?’
‘So you don’t drown in your beds,’ said Leo.
‘It’s fifteen, twenty years away. We won’t be here for that.’
‘One big storm, Dad.’
He looked at Leo gently. Leo was looking out over the hundred or so metres of grassland to the far-out tide and the remains of the buildings on the shore.
‘They’re like the sunken farmhouse we can see. When the reservoir is very low,’ Leo said. ‘Like now.’
‘Tell me. While your mother’s busy. These attacks?’
‘We’re fine. It’s weird to see the guards. But we’ve not had any trouble. It’s down the line the attacks are happening, really.’
‘Like on the pipeline, early days,’ David remembered.