Walcot

Chapter 13: ‘We’re Okay Here …’ (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 14: Over the Boundary (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 15: Le Forgel (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 16: A Lesson in Aristotle (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 17: The Wehrmacht Pays a Visit (#litres_trial_promo)

PART TWO (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 1: What a Wild Man (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 2: Hoarded Biscuits (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 3: Christmas at Gracefield (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 4: ‘Please Not to Shoot Us’ (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 5: Endless Carnage (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 6: Kiss Whom You Like (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 7: Leaving Home (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 8: Old Children (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 9: Ex-Army Furniture (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 10: A Man About Town (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 11: A Break in Torremolinos (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 12: The Disastrous Party (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 13: On the Grand Canal (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 14: Elizabeth Sips Her Wine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 15: ‘I Must Love Abby’ (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 16: A Modernizing Government (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 17: In the Alley (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 18: Blood on the Ice (#litres_trial_promo)

PART THREE (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 1: A New Line of Thought (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 2: Guernica (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 3: One of the Poor (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 4: ‘We Don’t Want no Trouble’ (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 5: Some Family Conversation (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 6: Over Jurassic Sand (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 7: Another Invitation (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 8: Supper at Sandy Bassett (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 9: Tolstoy Unread (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 10: Violet in Her Bath (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 11: Flight to Austin, Texas (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 12: The Future of the World (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 13: An Arrival From Venice (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 14: The Known Unknowns (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 15: The Sacrifice (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 16: A Fuller Understanding (#litres_trial_promo)

Notes (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Also by Brian Aldiss (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Introduction (#u76d66035-7fc3-5046-bfc7-cb9118cc9a60)

‘You are free men, whatever that means.’ So says Steve Fielding to some German soldiers, whose lives he spares during the closing events of a world war, in the freezing cold Ardennes. But Steve, as we learn in this complex unfolding of a life, is himself not a free man.

We find him first of all as a child, playing alone on a Norfolk beach – the beach that gives this complex tale its title.

Already, like a tide, doubt enters his life. Is he in danger? High on the dunes, a woman, almost a stranger, looks to see if Steve is safe.

So the question arises, to be solved if possible: do Steve’s parents wish to get rid of him? In love, in war or peace – or in an uncertain interlude between the two – the uncertainty continues to tease.