Whiskers of weed had caught in its coarsened grain. Bare white sticks, spindly crooked things, were all he could gather. Wind slopped the swell onto the shore. Sand was dredged up, swirled grey in the foam, almost settled, and was churned again as the shore ran with seething white. Jerra sat on the beam, seeing the wind whip the bay. There was no real wood around. Not that he expected much. He gazed towards the granite tumble at the other end of the beach. In all his solitary walking, the bleary dawns when he felt cold inside and had to walk and convince himself that Sean knew nothing of his secret – he wouldn’t be just cool and bitchy, he thought, he would be maniacal, tear him to ribbons – he had never ventured further than those blunt-faced boulders. He set off towards them, skirting the burst carcass of the seal that frightened him so much, triggering off all the memories. Close up, the rocks lost their darkness and smoothness and were blotched with little varices and pock marks, dissected by veins of algae, ribbed with salt.
