Looking up, he saw a couple coming towards him, arms linked, bodies pressed close, stepping out at twilight. He thought of turning away, veering off towards the dunes to allow them a clear passage along the shore, not wanting to intrude on their moment. But they had seen him now, and a sense of propriety drove them apart.
They approached through the blue-black light, eyes downcast like guilty children.
‘Good evening,’ said the man stiffly as they passed.
A thought occurred to Conrad, and he stopped in his tracks. ‘Excuse me.’
The couple hesitated, turning.
‘Do you walk here every evening?’ asked Conrad.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I was just wondering if you walked here most evenings.’
‘Why?’ said the man.
‘We’re from Albany,’ said the woman. She uttered the words as if they were some kind of protective incantation.
Conrad took a couple of steps towards them. ‘Last night, were you here around this time?’
‘Look,’ said the man, ‘we’re very late.’
‘It’s important,’ said Conrad.
‘We weren’t even here last night, okay? We got here today. And now we have to go.’ They turned and left, stepping briskly away.
Puzzled by their reaction, Conrad glanced down, taking in his appearance, aware for the first time that he was still in his fishing gear—the shabby twill trousers, patched and stitched and crusted with fish scales, plaid shirt protruding from the tattered hem of his jersey, once white, now stained with fish blood and streaked with tar. No wonder they’d been so anxious, confronted by a ragged, barefoot scrap of humanity.
He tugged the jersey up over his head and set off along the shore. After a few hundred yards, he cut inland, up the steep frontal dune. Beyond lay a tumble of sandhills, a tangled maze of crests and troughs, like an angry cross-sea. Narrowing to a point a few hundred yards beyond the Maidstone Club, this mysterious tract of vacant land extended four miles eastwards into Amagansett, widening considerably as it went, demarcated to the north by the steep inland bluff on which the wealthy had built their summer homes.