Our last visit to Turnchapel. Our last wander up Jennycliff. Up - to the bunker and the empty gun sockets - and then down, along the backs of the cottages, towards the path to Bovissands. Our last trip there, too, we muse, standing in the sea with our trousers rolled up over our ankles.
Ah, where can it go from here but down!, W. says. He has feeling of disaster, of imminent disaster. He's been expelled, exiled, from everything that was familiar and good. The disaster has reached him at last, even here in distant Devon. He thought he might outlive it, the disaster, but it's caught up with him now.
The stormclouds that mass in the distance are coming out to meet him. The sky's darkening, the air has grown heavy ... Any moment now, the lightning will come, W. says. Any moment, and he'll go up in smoke.
