He lived longer than had been expected, but obliged the doctor’s prediction by dying on Christmas Eve. His ashes had been scattered in an anonymous garden. It was now early April in the following year, and Gertrude Openshaw, née McCluskie, was looking out of a window at a cool cloudy sunlit scene. To her right, fairly close, was a small rocky headland where furry emerald grass was brushed down like a hat over a bulge of grey cliff, cluttered with tiny facets, which descended into the sea, it being now high tide. At low tide the rocks descended to a beach of stones below which was a little line of pale yellow sand. The stones were grey, oblong flattish, of a uniform size and shape, so that from a distance they looked like the scales of a fish. They had been clashed and beaten by the millennial sea into a terrible density and an absolute smoothness. Here and there only was one chipped or pitted or covered with little runic scratches. The faceted headland was quite easy to climb, and had been climbed by Anne Cavidge the day before.
