Eventually he got up, and after getting his money left the apartment.

"I want to rent a bicycle," he said to the man in the blue cover-alls whose stomach protruded, whose cheeks puffed.

"Only one?"

"Yes, just one. I'm going to the beach."

The man led him into a shadowed garage.

"Take any one," he said and pointed to the back. "Give me a five dollar deposit." Then he ambled to a desk with a light over it and wrote out a receipt which Paul signed.

"I won't be back until late this afternoon."

The fat man said nothing.

Paul pushed his bicycle out into the sun and pedalled down the street. And though he wanted to, he did not look back at the fat man who stood in front of the garage, sensual and stern. The transaction had excited Paul.

He dismissed it by pedalling faster. He stayed close to the sidewalk, and except at the intersection he ignored the cars. At a turn-off, which was a dirt path that tunnelled through an overgrowth, he got off the bicycle and walked until he heard the roar of surf. Then he hid the bicycle there and walked out into the white place.

The beach was long and stony. At one end of it a building, which had been a restaurant once blinding white with windows like silver in the sun, stood high on a knoll above a clutter of rocks where the ocean beat itself into a continual splash. The building was gray now and the windows were broken.

Paul looked at the building for a long time, then walked slowly to the water's edge. He bent down to it and cupped some foam in his hand and blew it away. He watched some sea gulls invade the rocks, and went over to them so that the gulls fled, and hunted among them for stones and shells.

He leaned against the rocks and wished he had brought his cigarettes and a book.

Then he decided to go up to the building.

At the top he was startled because there was anybody there at all and because the way the man stood reminded him of his father. The man's legs were crossed, his hands were in his pockets and he leaned against the building so that his stomach bent out. Paul started to turn away when the man lifted his hat, and he walked towards him not looking at the man but at the crumbling foundation, at the dead vines clinging to it, brown and shrivelled crisp. "Morning," the man said.

"Good morning," Paul replied, and turned and looked at what the man was looking at the sea where it lipped the beach was white where just before each wave broke was pale blue as the sun filtered through it but for a moment only and then where it was dark blue until it played into the sky, to the left where an arm of land grabbed towards the horizon and stopped and dropped into the sea, to the light house on the tip.

"I thought I was the only one here," Paul said, "You startled me."

"I saw you coming," the man said and lit a cigarette.

"Do you come here often?"

"Used to," the man said, "I used to fish here on the week-ends. Then I stopped for awhile, now I just come to look."

"I don't come here often."

"Ever been to the light house?" the man asked, tossing the cigarette up at the sky.

15