Read Online White Light by Mark O'Flynn - Free Book Online Page B

crossed it, the ground behind us gives a shudder and a bark, and with a tremendous crash, collapses into the sea.
    â€˜Jesus,’ says Hector, alarmingly. Hector never swears. Suddenly, he has his arm about my waist and is bustling me forward. Me, who has not bustled for years.
    â€˜Come on. Quick sticks.’
    Behind us, or rather beneath us, the sea is boiling orange and white.
    â€˜What happened?’ I ask, frightened.
    â€˜The bridge collapsed.’
    It is an understatement but I might as well say it: ‘Lucky we weren’t still standing on it.’
    â€˜Yes Caroline, that’s the understatement of the year…Jesus.’
    â€˜No need to swear.’
    Both of us are trembling with the close shave of it, staring stupidly at the water below. I can smell fresh rock.
    â€˜We’re trapped.’
    Even I can see how obvious that is. We are now suddenly alone on what is evidently a newly created limestone pillar. An island, albeit a small one. We can still hear bits of the pinnacle, great slabs of rock carving off and falling into the sea. Hector nudges me to what he estimates is the geometrical centre of the island. It is only a matter of about twenty paces in any direction to the edge. It is so narrow I could throw a stone from one side to the other. And I’m not much of a shot. I can barely throw a ball of rolled up socks across the lounge room. Oh, I could if I was angry enough, but Hector hasn’t done enough to annoy me yet. Give him his due.
    There is another, second archway linking our pinnacle to a smaller one further out to sea, but there is no way I am going to cross that. Hector is right; we are trapped. Exiled. Forty metres up in the air on a teetering limestone tower. Actually, it is only the clouds scudding by that give the impression the limestone is teetering.
    Over on the opposite cliff, people are calling, waving. I can see tourist buses and our own little van in the car park. People stand back from the edge because I guess their side of the cliff is still crumbling, too. They wave to us. We wave back. The welcome humanity of it. No man is an island and no woman either, I suppose. There is a slight breeze from the south; on a warm day, this could possibly be described as being as refreshing as the beads of condensation on a cold glass of chardonnay. Only, it’s not a warm day. It appears no one knows what to do, neither the people on the mainland, nor us. We can make out the windswept squeak of their voices, but not what they are shouting. The isthmus is gone. We are stuck.
    Gradually, it comes to me that I still need to go to the toilet.
    â€˜Looks like we might be here for a while, old girl.’
    â€˜Don’t call me old girl.’
    â€˜May as well pull up a pew.’
    Hector sits, grunting, on the bare ground. I sit beside him, watching the figures on the far cliff watching us. There is nothing else to do.
    â€˜Wish we’d brought the picnic basket,’ he says after a while.
    â€˜Hmph.’
    â€˜Pincher Martin ate seaweed on his rock. I guess we could eat—what is this stuff?—moss?’
    â€˜You can eat moss. I’m sitting here till we’re rescued.’
    I can be stubborn when I want to be. No one seems to be doing anything. More buses arrive on the far escarpment. There seems to be lots of excitement over there. I guess we can already divide our ordeal, in the manner of the marooned, into the time before we sat down and the time after we sat down. It is, in my experience, an unprecedented situation.
    It’s strange how ideas come into Hector’s head, because out of the blue he says, ‘I wonder if this means there are now nine Apostles?’
    â€˜Oh shut up, Hector. I’m cold.’
    â€˜Do you want my jacket?’
    â€˜And have you catch your death again!’
    There is a modicum of warmth where our shoulders touch. Uncharacteristically, he puts his arm around me and gently