Run Away to the Ends of the Earth
– Susan! Susan, are you even listening to me?
The voice floated in from the kitchen, slicing through the heavy morning sleep like a nail through plywood. Susan Margaret Whitfield opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling above her. The crack above the right corner had grown a little longer, she thought. Shed noticed that crack for at least twenty years now. Once, shed meant to fill it in. Never did.
– Susan! Am I meant to make my own coffee or what?
Fifty-threean important number, one to keep in mind every morning, otherwise you wouldnt understand how so much, both what happened and what never came to pass, could all fit into a single life. Fifty-three, thirty of those years filled with that same voice spilling through the morning. In the beginning, she used to rise with ease. Sometimes shed even smile, believing there was something good, something reassuring in ita sign that someone wanted her coffee, that someone needed her.
Now she just lay there for another second, staring at the crack above her.
– Coming, – she told the ceiling.
The lino underfoot was icy. Octoberradiators barely warm yetand the morning chill was one she knew by heart: right foot first, then left, and a short shuffle to her slippers. Slippers always by the bedside, because she herself put them there, every single night, out of habit.
Philip sat in the kitchen in only a vest, swiping through something on his phone. Large, heavy, with sparse hair swept over a growing bald spot. The mug in front of him was empty, waiting.
– The Cottons are coming over today, – he said, eyes still to the screen. – Six oclock. Iron my blue shirtthe one with the spare buttons. And make a proper dinner this time, not something thrown together. Gail Cotton always keeps an eye on what we serve.
Susan reached for the moka pot. Measured out the ground coffee. Flicked on the gas.
– Do you hear me?
– I hear you, Philip.
– Well, youre quiet as ever. Hard to tell if it goes in or not.
The coffee began its slow rise. She watched the dark froth appear and found herself thinking of the dream shed hada sea, not any sea in particular, just the sea: wide, grey-green, capped with white foam. And the scenthow she remembered that scent from her childhood, from that one trip to Margate with Aunt Edith: dampness, salt, and something else that cannot be named but instantly, deeply changes the way you breathe.
– Susan! Youll let the coffee boil over.
She removed the pot in time. Poured it into his mug and set it before him.
– Ill iron the shirt after breakfast.
– No, do it now, while Im shaving. Then itll be ready.
He got up, took his mug, and disappeared into the bathroom. Within a minute, she heard the whirring of the electric shaversteady, brisk, well-known. Seven minutes, exactly; shed timed it, more than once, out of boredom.
Susan remained at the hob.
On the wall above the fridge hung the tear-off calendar: eighteenth of October. She stared at the date, realising she couldnt remember a single eighteenth of October from recent years. Theyd all blurrily run together. Coffee, shirts, dinners, guests, tidying. Coffee, shirts, dinners, guests, tidying. And somewhere in the lowest depths of that endless circle, like a coin lost in a deep well, there was something her own, long untouched.
In her youth shed painted. She was good at it, so she was told. Her stern, reticent teacher, Mr. Archibald Freeman, once stopped after looking at her watercoloureyes lingering a long timeand said: Youve a sense for colour, Whitfield. Thats rare. Shed nearly gone to art college. Nearly. But then Philip appeared, and as things go, there was no time for university, then came Emily, then moving, then renovations, and then more renovations. The paints were put away in the loft, the brushes left to dry and tossed, and eventually the loft itself filled up with household things they never really used.
The shavers droning continued behind the wall.
Susan noticed a peculiar exhaustion, heavy and almost physicalnot the kind you get after a hard day, but a different sort, the kind that sits deep behind the ribs and doesnt shift after sleep, after a holiday, or chatting with friends. Anna Smith from downstairs once told her, Sue, you never think about yourself, do you? But what does that even mean, to look after oneself? Susan had laughed then, said she was too busy for that.
Too busy. Thirty years, too busy.
She fetched the iron. Found the blue shirt in the wardrobe, second shelf, where Philip always kept his best clothes. Unfolded the ironing board, plugged the iron in, and waited for it to heat. A grey October morning lay beyond the window; the caretaker outside swept the pavement below, his broom rhythmically scraping the tarmac, mingling with the drone of the shaver and the soft interior drone within her shed learned to ignore.
Aunt Edith had died three years ago. Left Susan her cottage in Margatea tiny wooden place with a verandah, opening straight onto the bay. Philip had scoffed: Its a dump. Youd need to put more in than the place is worthmay as well sell. But there were no buyers, and Susan couldnt quite bring herself to do it, though she never really knew why. Maybe the scent of that dreamed sea. Maybe Aunt Ediths words: Out there, Susan, its so quiet that at first its a bit frightening, then you realise its the quiet youve missed all your life.
The iron was ready. Susan pressed it down the sleeve and stopped, quite suddenly.
The buzzing still came faintly through the wall. Seven minutes. She had seven minutes.
The idea appeared not as a decision but as something long made and kept inside without her knowing. Just surfaced, like a cork bobbing up in a pond: it had always been there on the bottom, now it was at the top. Susan set down the iron. She stood for a second, listeningto herself, to what had risen to the surface.
Then she went to the bedroom.
Her bag was still in the loft, a small travel case she used for visiting her mum in Oxford. She fetched it, quick and quiet. Change of clothes. Warm jumper. Papers from the top drawer: passport, the deed to the Margate cottage, carefully tucked among her documents, never mentioned to Philip. The debit card where shed set aside her own funds across the yearsthe loose change from groceries and housekeeping hed never bothered to track. Not much, but enough.
Her hands were steady. That surprised her.
She picked up her phone, booked a taxi to Heathrow with barely a whisper to the device. Eight minutes, said the app. Susan dressed fast, quietlycoat, boots, scarf shed knitted herself, dark blue with grey stripes. She hoisted the bag on her shoulder.
At the kitchen, she paused for a moment. The shirt lay un-ironed across the board, iron cooling beside it. On the table, Philips empty coffee mug and a lone plate from last nights supper.
She didnt leave a note. Thought about itand didnt.
The door closed softly behind her. The lift took her down to the ground floor. A pale estate car waited outside, the only car around, its driver a silent man in his forties, who neither greeted her nor questioned anything. He simply set off.
The streets of London slipped by, drowsy in the chill dawn. Amber traffic lights at the intersections, shops just opening, one woman in a bright red coat hauling a trolley bag away from the market. Susan watched through the window, thinking shed seen these scenes a thousand timesthese streets, these traffic lightsyet never had they looked as strange and as curiously dear as they did now.
At the airport she bought a ticket to Norwich (the nearest place that could loosely resemble a new beginning), with a connection via Cambridge. It was expensive. She paid without a blink.
Soon, as the plane lifted off, Susan gazed from the window as the grey rooftops fell away and vanished into the haze. She thought she ought to visit the loo, since she was here now. She wondered if she should have brought sandwiches. She wondered whether she ought to have ironed that shirt, really, after all.
Her phone buzzed.
Philip. Twice in a minute.
She took the call.
– Where are you? – he barked, the voice he reserved for when things went wrong: sharp, grinding, with that engines rumble about to boil over. – My shirts not ironed. Where the devil are you?
– Im on a plane, Philip.
Silence. Not long, but heavy.
– What do you mean, on a plane? Where to? Do you realise the Cottons are coming today? Gails already messaged, theyll be earlyfive oclock. Did you leave any lunch for me?
– No lunch. Ive left, Philip.
– Sue. – His voice turned, something low and dangerous threading through it now. – Enough games. Tell me right now where youre off to and when youll be back.
Susan looked out the window. Clouds drifted beneath the wing, dense and white like whipped cream. She had never flown above clouds before, never known how white they were.
– Philip, Ive gone away. Im not coming back. Live your lifeI would like to try living mine.
A long silence. Then he talked and talked, and she heard everything: rage, confusion, and something he likely wasnt aware ofa frightened childs trembling. He spoke of the flat, the money, that shed lost her senses, her age, his ailments, Emily, what shed done to her future.
Susan listened, calmly. No anger; no tears. Only quiet, as though his words struck her and fell away beyond, just like rain splattering against a closed window.
– Philip, – she said, when he stopped for breath. – I hear you. Im sorry. But Im not coming back.
She ended the call. Pulled out the tiny plastic SIM card, held it in her palm for a moment, then slipped it into the gap between the seats. Tucked the phone back in her bag.
The man by the aisle, elderly and reading a broadsheet, glanced over and retreated into his news.
Susan leaned back and shut her eyes. Somewhere deep inside, a knot looseneda knot that had been tight for far, far too long.
***
She arrived in Margate to a light raina thin misty drizzle that hung in the air, clinging to eyelashes and wool, smelling of seaweed and fish. The bus from Norwich crawled, steamed-up windows and all, and from the stop she walked the cobbled lane with her case slung over one shoulder.
Aunt Ediths cottage sat at the cul-de-sacs end: small, timber-framed, once painted green but now washed to the colour of old lichen. The gate creaked. The porch sagged to one side. The keykept since always on the ring with the shed keystubbornly turned in the lock.
Inside held that distinct scent of empty houses: damp, wood, that faint sweetness and must of old keepsake boxes filled with letters. Susan walked through to the front roomtable, two chairs, a bed with iron rails and a striped mattress. Linen curtains, forgotten by Aunt Edith, still hung at the window. And there, through the trees and drizzle, she glimpsed something vast and grey. The sea. Close enough to touch, just past the pines and the road.
She stood peering out that window for a good long time.
Then she opened the casement. The wet, salty air swept in like a long-awaited guest. Susan breathed deep; something in her throat began to tremble. Not tearsno, not that. Something else, that feeling when, after a long, long walk, you finally arrive, sit down, and realise: this is it. Youve arrived.
In the end, though, she did cry. She stood silently by the window, the tears flowing quietly, not sadness, not miserysomething for which she had no ready name.
Outside, steps sounded on the porch. Then a tap at the door.
Susan wiped her face with her sleeve and went to answer.
On the step stood a man of about sixty, sturdy in wellington boots and a rain-spattered anorak, something wrapped in a newspaper cradled in his hands.
– Good afternoon, – he said. – You must be Ediths niece? Names Victor Graham. I live next doorused to look after Ediths cat, these past years. Lovely folk have the cat now, dont worry. Ive brought you some fishjust caught, local.
– Thank you, – Susan replied, voice croaky yet. – Im Susan Whitfield.
– You look a bit like Edith, round the eyes. Are you here for good, or just to look in?
She paused.
– For good.
He nodded as if nothing in the least unusual, handed her the fish.
– Know how to light a wood stove? Theres logs in the shed, stacked in August. Yell if you need a hand.
Susan did know hownot quite, but nearly. As a child, shed watched her gran tend one, and today she fumbled a bit, but the logs caught, dry and honest, and warmth crept into the room, living and unevennothing like the clinical, pallid heat of central heating. This was real warmth: it tingled her cheeks, made her scoot in closer.
That night, she lay under the eiderdown she found in a chest, listening to the seajust there, beyond the pines and the roadthe seas voice deep and steady, like the breath of a dozing giant. Rush in, pause, pull back. Rush in, pause, pull back.
She didnt think of Philip. Nor Emily. Nor the flat, nor what the neighbours might say, nor how Gail Cotton would take it. She simply listened to the sea and thought: tomorrow she would air the bedding, mend the steps, and see about Victor Grahamhe seemed a good sort.
***
Days in Margate drifted along, neither fast nor slow, just differently. Susan awoke as the sky lightened, brewed coffee on her little burnerthe old one, as the gas wasnt yet sorted. She drank it at the window, watching light shift on the water in the Channel.
Her first week she set to sorting the housescrubbing, mopping, letting air flow through. She stripped off faded wallpaper, uncovering dark but sturdy beams beneath. At the tiny market, she bought staples: potatoes, onions, pearl barley, tins of pilchards, rye bread flecked with caraway from the bakery on the high street, the scent so inviting shed stand a moment just to savour it.
Victor Graham dropped in. Fixed the steps, planed a board on the verandah, refitted the gate. He spoke little but always just right, never a word too manyand Susan, having lived with a man who was always talking and saying nothing, quietly admired that.
One day, Victor brought a canvas and a set of paints.
– Edith said you used to paint, – he said simply, setting them down. – Ive some to spare. Theyre yours if you want them.
Susan looked at the canvas: barely yellowed, primed. Tubes of paint, brushes of all sizes. The turpentines tang hit her, old and familiar. For a moment, she was flung backwards, to an art classrooms bright windows and rows of easels.
– I dont paint anymore, – she said.
– Well, you will again, – he replied. And left.
For two days she avoided the canvas, stacking bits around it, deliberately busy elsewhere. On the third day she laid out the paints, lined up the brushes, simply held one in her hand for a whilea good brush, soft but with character.
She began with a quick studyjust the sea, strip of water beyond the pines, grey sky breaking through. It was rubbishthe sky wrong, water wrong, proportions all off. But there was something there, enough to keep her in her chair till dusk, forgetting hunger or stiff legs.
Soon, she carried her sketchbook out to the beach: rocks, gulls on pilings, a fishermans old boat flipped on the shingle. Her hands remembered on their own, tentatively at first, but then with a gathering confidence.
Victor glanced at her sketches one day.
– Not bad, – he said. – Youve got the knack for form. Not everyone does.
– You know about these things?
– A little. I dabblenothing more.
– Can I see?
– One day, – he smiled. – But only if you show me yours first.
So they talkedat first about art, then about books, then about anything and everything. Susan couldnt recall the last time shed merely talked and listened without hurry, without agenda. With Philip there had long ceased to be conversation; only information: whod buy milk, whod fix what, whod be where and when. With Emily, once a week on the phonelittle more than a mutual briefing.
One bright morning, Susan took a larger canvas and really began. She didnt planjust mixed colours and looked at the sea, mixed again, spread paint, looked. At some point, her fingers grew bolder than the brush, and she set it aside, working with her fingertips and palms, feeling paint cold and alive, rough at the edges, smooth in the centreblue, green, grey, and just there near the horizon, a single band of warm amber, unplanned but right.
She didnt know where the hours went, surfacing only as rain battered the window at three in the afternoon, having started at nine. On the canvas, the sea had come alivenot a postcard, not a photo, but living, uncertain and beautiful. The sky was as she felt it, not as it was; and the amber band glowed, born not only of pigment.
She stepped backand again, a step more. Looked.
Victor entered then, with two mugs of tea.
He set them on the ledge, staring at the canvas a good while.
– See? – he said softly, never turning from her work.
She took her mug. The tea was strong and sweet, not her usual, but somehow just right.
***
Emily arrived in the third week. Susan saw her from the windowa daughter, walking the lane with a city-sized bag, her shoes all wrong for the cobbles. Tall, dark-haired, bearing Philips shoulders and his peculiar look: a mixture of expectation and hurt.
Susan stepped onto the porch.
– Hello, Em.
– Hi. – Her voice was even, but buzzed with that live wire tension. – Do you even realise what youve done?
– Come inside.
– Mum, dad cant cope. His blood pressure was sky-high last week. I cant keep running over, Ive got workAndy and the kids, you understand?
– I understand. Come in, get some food.
– I havent come for food, I want answers! – Emily stalked in, gaze sweeping the wood-panelled walls, the stove, the plain table. – You mean to live here? In this?
– Yes.
– Mother. – Emily put down her bag, turning, something small and frightened in her voice now. – Whats going on? Are you ill? Just tell me. Let me help.
– Im not ill. Im fine. Truly.
– Finewhats fine about it? You left your husband, walked away from home, hopped who knows where, threw out your SIM Dad rings me every day, hes a wreck…
– Em.
– He says hell file for divorce, that youve no right to the flat if you left on your own. I dont know if its truehow would I know?but cant you see if he sells the flat…
– Emily, Susans quiet tone found its mark, stopping her mid-torrent. Let him sell. I dont want the flat.
Emily stared. Was silent a moment.
– What, you think youre a teenager now? Come off it, mumthis is a disgrace! What will people say, what will the neighbours think?
Susan didnt reply. She took Emilys hand and led her to the main room, where, in the windows light, the canvas waited on its stand.
They stood together before it.
The noon sunlight was sidelong now, and the painting looked different than it had in the morning, but still alive. The sea as it was in Novemberheavy, greenish, foaming crests. Sky nearly white, and at the horizon, that same stripe of amber, implausibly warm amid all this leaden gloom.
Emily said nothing for a long time. Susan looked at the painting, not at her daughter.
– Look, Em. – Her voice was steady. – This is me. Not just your cook or cleanerme. And I have a right to this. Keep the flat, I dont want it.
Emily didnt answer at once. She stepped back, another step, staring as if at something never expected.
– Did you paint this yourself? – Her voice was different now, soft.
– I did.
– But you never paintedwell, not since I remember.
– I painted, before you. Stopped after.
Emily stood a moment, then another, looking as if something inside her was shiftinga little like the sky changes just before a cloud departs, first at the edges, then in the middle.
– Its beautiful, – she said, almost grudgingly.
– I know.
Another pause. Somewhere beyond, a gull shrieked, the breeze tugged the curtain.
– I need to gothe return bus is at five.
– Ill see you to the stop.
They walked together, silent, across the cobbles. At the bus stop, Emily turned to her mother. The certainty shed arrived with was gone; something else flickered in her features.
– Mum, – she said. – Itll take a while for dad to… maybe. But Ill try to explain.
– You dont need to. Hes a grown man.
– He cant cope without you.
– Hell learn, – Susan repliednot harshly, simply as fact.
Emily hesitated. Then, awkwardly, quickly, stepped forward and hugged her, almost as she had as a child. Susan hugged her back and inhaled that familiar scent, changed only by perfumes.
– Forgive us, – Emily said softly. She didnt say whom she meant. – For everything, maybe.
Susan smoothed her back.
– Best go, or the bus will leave.
Emily walked away, turned once, then boarded.
Susan stood and watched the red tail-lights disappear down the track. The wind off the sea was cold, whipping her blue scarf and sneaking inside her coat. But it was a good cold. Real cold.
***
November in Margate was harsh and beautiful. No tourists at all. The town seemed to shrink, become quiet and somehow inward. Fishermen went out at dawn through a shroud of mist and returned at noon. The bakery always smelled of loaves and cinnamon. Evenings, yellow lights glowed in the windows all along the lane: other peoples gentle domestic lives unfolding, and for the first time in years, Susan marvelled at the simple sight of them.
She worked every day. Five canvases now, each better than the last. Victor would drop by, say little, but enough. One evening, he brought her a battered book on colour theoryscrawled with pencil notes in the margins. She read it by the fire, making her own notes now. It felt unexpectedly good, learning againnot because she had to, but because she wanted to.
One day at the market, Susan bought some clay, just to try. She set the lump of raw, damp, living earth on the table, kneading it, aimless. At first, it was stubborn and chilly, but, as it warmed, it softened. Soon, some shape began to appeara boat, a little like the upturned skiff on the shore.
She laughed at her lopsided boatwobbly, amateur. Set it on the windowsill for her own amusement, her own self-made relic.
When Victor next came in for tea and saw her boat, he was silent a while.
– Its better than you think.
– Its a wonky little boat.
– Its an honest boat, – he countered. – A bit of wonk isnt always a fault.
– Are you being philosophical?
– Maybe a touch. Got any more clay?
It turned out Victor had tried clay once, long ago, in his building colleges art club. They sat together at one table, each with their own lump, working in silence. But it wasnt an awkward silence, rather the good sortthat rare thing where nothing needs to be filled in.
Susan thought shed never known this before. Or forgotten, or ignored it. That, in all those years, this, exactly, was what shed missed: a silence where one could just be.
The solicitors letter came during her second month: Philip had filed for divorce. Susan read it, folded it up, tucked it away in the desk. She rang a young lawyer she found online. The lawyer assured her she was entitled to her half the flat. Susan simply sighed and said,
– I dont want any. Let him keep it, as long as theres no fuss.
The lawyer paused.
– Youre sure?
– Im sure.
It was a strange decision. Everyone she told (really, only Victor) said she should think it through, but it was already settled inside her. The flat belonged in the old life. To take some part would mean returning there, if only in memory. She had no wish for that.
Emily rang a month after her visit. Her tone was gentler; she asked after her, after the house, whether she was warm enough. She said her father had calmed some, that shed spoken to him, that his anger was different now.
– Mum, she said at the end, I was wondering. That paintingcould you, I dont know, do another for me? Not the samejust something of the sea. Id love it for our hallway.
Susan smiled.
– Of course.
– Really?
– Really. When you visit in spring, take it home with you.
Emily paused, then said softly,
– Im glad youre there. I wouldnt admit it for a long time, but Im glad.
Susan took a breath before replying.
– So am I.
***
Winter crept into Margate quietly, without fuss. One morning, snow coated the sills and pines, and the sea beyond the trees no longer looked grey, but nearly bluea kind of blue shed never seen, somewhere between indigo and steel, lit from beneath, like ice.
Susan painted her own winter sea. Her best work yet; she knew it, though she never said so.
Victor saw it, said nothing for a while, then:
– This should be exhibited.
– Dont be daft.
– Im not. Theres a small gallery in Norwichtakes local artists. I know the owner.
– But Im not local. Im not even really an artist.
– Susan Whitfield, he answered, patient as with someone stubborn for no good reason. – Youve painted six canvases in two months, two are good, one is outstanding. Youre local now. Own it.
She did. Quietly, not without reluctance, but she did.
She took three canvases to the gallery in January, carefully rolled. The ownera shrewd old fellowstudied them at length and agreed to take them all.
On her way home in the bus, Susan thought, likely this wouldnt count as fame or a new start the way the magazines and documentaries meant. No one would ever write about it or make an uplifting video. Just a woman, fifty-three, taking three paintings to a little provincial gallery. That was it.
But when she came home and smelled warm wood and sea air, saw her sketches and her wonky clay boat on the sill, inside her something settled, calm and certainas though shed finally arrived at exactly the right place.
***
February brought gales. The sea battered the shore for days; at night, the house trembled in the wind, a deep reverberating noise, like a giants heart. Susan grew used to it.
She grew used to other things too: waking to a quiet house, not a shouted command from a kitchen; making her plans for herself, eating as she pleased, living as she liked. The silence no longer felt empty, as it had in the flat, her and Philip in separate rooms, exhausted not by peace but by one another.
She grew used to Victor Graham too. He came dailysometimes for five minutes, sometimes all evening. They spoke of art, the sea, books, childhood. He shared stories of his wife, whod passed five years back; she told tales of Aunt Edith. Sometimes they simply sat together on the porch, on good evenings, sipping tea, gazing at the bay, content as could beno despite, no but, just good.
She painted him once, without him knowing, from memory. Not perfectly; his features were somehow gentler on canvas than in person. But the gaze was rightcalm, inquisitive, his quiet smile, the one he wore when saying something important and making it sound offhand.
For now, she put the portrait away. Not out of shame, but because some things have to mature.
The divorce was finalised in March. Emily called to tell her, sounding apologetic.
– Mum, its done. The flat is his. Youre really sure
– Emily, love. All is as it should be. Im fine.
– You dont regret it?
Susan looked out the window. Evening was settling in, the sky blushing over the pines, and across the pink water ran a single bright bandalmost golden.
– No, – she replied. – I dont.
And that was the truth.
***
March edged onward. The snow melted, the bay grew bluer every day, crispness in the air shifting to something alivetinged with green, edged with hope. Gulls returned and shrieked overhead, their voices wild and exuberant.
Susan sat on the verandah. There was a cup of hot tea before her, lemon wedge and all. On her lap, her sketchbook, unopened. Beyond the rails, the pines, the road, the bank, the bay opening to the horizon. Out there, the colour of the sky changed with dusk, layering from grey to blue to something richer.
A chair scraped. Victor sat beside her, her open sketchbook in hand.
– Here, – he said, tapping a page with a pencil. – You see, the horizons tilted leftwards.
– I do. I hadnt noticed.
– Its from watching the water, not the line. The eye follows what interests it.
– Is that a fault or a flourish?
– Its yours, – he replied. – Some people do it on purpose. You do it naturally.
She took the pad. The horizon did slope, and that slope held something she liked, though she couldnt have said why.
The sun caught fire. The sky over the bay flared pink to orange, and all along the far edge, there was that colour, the special one shed been seeking for weeksa deep, living gold, like amber by candlelight.
Victor set aside his pencil.
– Susan, – he said, voice quiet and easy as ever. – Dont you regret it? The flat, the old life?
She watched the sunset.
The sea answered, broad and deep and rolling. A gull wailed high above. Someones dog barked twice and stopped.
– Look, – she said, nudging him to the sunset, – that streak across the horizon. Ive hunted for that paint my whole life.
Victor looked, silent a moment, then answered, perfectly serious:
– I know it. Its called pale ochre with white. Though in yourstheres a touch of cadmium.
– A touch of cadmium, – she repeated, thinking.
– Just a drop. Too much, you lose the warmth.
She nodded, dug out her pencil and scribbled in the margin: pale ochre, white, drop of cadmium. Then she watched the sunset again, then her note, the hint of a smile on her lips.
The sea was darkening, but the golden streak lingereda last, stubborn warmth. Susan cupped her hands about her mug, felt its comfort, and thought: tomorrow, shed ready the big canvasthe one as yet untouched. Shed paint thisexactly this, while it was still so fresh.
As for the paintshed find it.
