The Sea Change (47 page)

‘I’ll join you in the taxi in a few minutes,’ and disappeared.

Now they were being led to the aircraft. He walked to the window in order to see them better. As they reached the steps, Jimmy turned round, saw him, and waved and then she did the same. She was
wearing a yellow coat and her head was bare. He raised his hand and dropped it again. Now they were up the gangway and out of sight. He watched the plane taxi out to the head of a runway and crouch
there, and he remembered explaining to her that they ran the engines up one by one: he remembered her gravity, her smooth hair with the black band, her friendly excitement, and was wrenched by a
moment’s anguish as though he was dragging something out of his heart. They were off: he watched the collection of speed until the moment when they actually left the ground when the speed
seemed, as it were, to be dropped on to it – they were just airborne, suspended a few feet from the earth, and then – as suddenly – moving again, climbing up into the blue air
towards the sun. He watched until they turned away to make the wide circle and head west, the aircraft glinting and small, like a lucky charm in the sky.

They were gone: no longer part of his present: to steady himself, he tried to see this loss as it might be seen. A boy who might be his son, and a girl whom he might have loved – would
have married if circumstances had been different. Now, although they would be unstrapping themselves from their seats, they could not leave the aircraft: they could make what they wanted of the
journey, but they could not escape it. This balance of what was inevitable, and what could be changed occurred again to him now as he tried to see his own framework; immediately, the taxi outside,
containing Lillian whom all day he had scarcely recognized, although all day she had still been his wife, the mother of the Sarah who died . . . What had been her concealment during this day which
had begun with her relinquishing her daughter? That had been bravely done and, as he understood this, something more of her revealed with courage in it which amounted almost to the beginning of
something else.

When he reached the taxi she was already sitting in the back of it. He climbed in, the driver mentioned Athens, and they thundered off. At the appropriate moment the driver said
‘Akropolis’ and they both turned to see this eminent beauty. She said then:

‘Do you find it astonishing that it has been there all our lives and we have not seen it until now?’

‘Tomorrow morning I will take you to see it before we catch our aeroplane.’

‘Oh yes,’ she said: ‘it will be our last chance.’

He put his hand in his pocket for a cigarette, and felt the letter that for the last twenty-four hours he had needed to keep with him: when he turned to her she looked at him steadily, calm with
her knowledge of the day, and his spirit rose to her serenity as he recognized that these were his circumstances; opportunities, neither easy nor impossible, lay under his hand – were simply
facts of their small matter waiting to be transformed.

The Sea Change

Elizabeth Jane Howard is the author of eleven novels, the last of which completes the bestselling ‘Cazalet Chronicle’, which comprises
The Light Years, Marking
Time, Confusion
and
Casting Off
.

Also by Elizabeth Jane Howard

The Long View

After Julius

Odd Girl Out

Something In Disguise

Getting It Right

Mr Wrong

The Lover’s Companion (ed)

Green Shades (ed)

Marking Time

Confusion

Casting Off

First published 1959 by Jonathan Cape Ltd

This edition published 1995 by Pan Books

This electronic edition published 2011 by Pan Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Basingstoke and Oxford
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com

ISBN 978-1-447-21166-2 EPUB

Copyright © Elizabeth Jane Howard 1959
Introduction copyright © Sybille Bedford 1986

The right of Elizabeth Jane Howard to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital,
optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be
liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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