Alex had walked into the sea when she was nineteen, her pockets filled with stones.
	For whatever reason, it hadn’t worked.  Perhaps she’d struggled and kicked free of her jacket, maybe the stones had simply fallen out.  She had no memory of the event beyond her head sinking beneath the frigid waves, the ground slipping from beneath her feet, and the realization that her decision had been a bad one searing through her mind like the explosion of a flashbulb.
	Whatever the case, her mother had seen her off to hospital and the doctors had concluded that the shivery, quiet young woman before them was a nervous case who had probably read too much Virginia Woolf.
	She’d been free of the tender mercies of hospital for a year now but still sometimes dreamt of it, when her nightly mind wasn’t otherwise occupied with the sea.
	Her mother’s house was within sight of it, parked atop a pebbly hill where sparse and sharp edged grass and shrubs grew in fitful bunches between smooth edged silvery stones.
	The stones ran their way to the water, disintegrating to pebbles by the time they were kissed by the restless shhhh of the low tide.  The sea here was gray and dark, seeming to inform the sky, which stayed much the same way.
	She tried her best not to look at it.

	Alex had seen lights coming from the sea when she was fourteen but had been impatiently informed by her mother that they were ships.
	Alex had told her mother that they came from beneath the water but received only chilly silence.  She already knew what her mother wanted to say.  What the likely answer was.  That she was simply seeing the submarines of some fleet or another, American or Soviet or British…perhaps even of the same make her father had captained.
	She had seen the lights once or twice beyond that but told nobody, just watched them flicker and flash a bit beyond the surf.  Could a submarine come that close to shore?  She laid on her stomach in bed and observed but they never came any closer, nor any further away.
	They had flickered and flared in disparate colors before vanishing abruptly and leaving the sea empty once more.
	Her mother had gone to hospital that same year for a brief restorative stay, while Alex was in boarding school someplace to the south, where there were gardens and lawns and white toothed, empty eyed people in their hundreds, but no sea.

	The fact that she had ever missed the sea troubled Alex but she could see no reason to fault her younger self.  The poor thing had not yet figured out that she would be truly unhappy anywhere she went.
	When the sun rose and turned the skeins of morning mist a pale, almost delicate mustard gas yellow, Alex moved from her room and made herself ready for the day.  The light in her lavatory operated on a string and hesitated to dispense with its role when she pulled it.  Alex had considered before that each time she bid light come to this cramped little room she disturbed some sort of electrified Sisyphus, who wrestled each electron into place, but only for as long as Alex kept the light on.
	She imagined that when she flipped the switch all of the electrons needed to then be put away.  She’d even penned a little story of this nature when she was younger but hadn’t the heart to show it to anyone.
	Thoughts faded as she looked to the mirror in the solidifying flickers of light.  A little crack in the corner, made when she’d slammed the mirrored door of her medicine cabinet closed one unhappy morning.
	Alex looked critically over herself, with a pitiless eye.  Unrested, she was.  Hair, certainly frizzy and tangled…in desperate need of brushing.  Face…very much horsy and unappealing, as she had been allowed to know over and over again, teeth very very present when she smiled, almost protruding, like those of a lamprey or an eel.
	She looked down to the sink and turned the enameled tap, listening to the rattling hiss of the pipes and wondering idly if perhaps the electrified Sisyphus in her lights had a companion, some little man whose sole job it was to push the water up and out of her faucet.
	Left the lavatory washed and somewhat refreshed, dark hair pinned back in a tight bun that kept the more rebellious of her follicles strictly in line.  Moved to fetch her wristwatch from the nightstand and observed as she did a little movement in the water just beyond the rocky shores.
	There was a drop off there, she reflected, how deep it went she did not know.  Yet it seemed a man was there, or the dark outline of one anyhow, bobbing easily in the swell, head and broad shoulders above water.
	Then, just as suddenly as he’d appeared, the man sank beneath the waves and was gone, leaving scarcely a ripple in his wake.
	Alex blinked and watched the water for some time but observed nothing further.
	That hadn’t been a man, she decided.  They had no neighbors for some distance on either side, and she doubted that anyone from the mainland had simply decided to hop into the North Sea for a brisk swim over to Britain and back.
	Had she seen a seal?  A porpoise poking its head and fins above water?
	Had she seen a Navy frogman?
	Somehow that seemed to be the likeliest explanation, the most reasonable of the theories that popped into her mind.  This was a relatively isolated stretch of coast.  If the military were running cold water drills then this would be a good place to do it.
	A secondary thought occurred to Alex.  The nationality of the frogman, as she was deciding to term the figure in the water, was not yet determined.  He’d not necessarily need to be a British frogman.  Perhaps he was American, or even Soviet.
	Alex consulted her internal patriotism, what bits and uninformed shreds she had of it, and decided that she wouldn’t mind if the Soviets were spying.  Perhaps it would put them off of invading Britain if they decided that everything was as bleak and gray and windy as her little plot of the island.
	Adjusting her wristwatch, Alex moved quietly downstairs.  Heard as she did the hiss of the gas stove and bump and rattle of the kettle being settled atop a burner.  So mother was up already…of course she was.  As early as Alex rose, her mother rose earlier.
	“You’re wearing your father’s watch again.”  Her mother said as Alex stepped into the kitchen, keeping close to the back wall, drab charcoal dress brushing against the cabinets.
	Alex almost said something.  Took a breath.
	“Should I go get eggs?”  She asked instead, voice quiet and entirely civil.
	“No need,” said her mother, “we have plenty.”
	She turned back to face the kettle.
	Somehow she looked even older from this angle, back stooped and gray hair drawn back in a severe bun.
	Alex had been a late baby for her mother.  When she was a child her mother had delighted in telling her this.  She’d been forty six, and having a child at that age was marvelous…a miracle.
	Alex had always hated being called that, but she’d have been lying if it didn’t touch her down deep someplace special.  Like a lot of childhood pet names, she supposed.
	“Do…you need help with anything?”  She asked, the silence growing to chafe.  She never knew if her mother did this on purpose, but it seemed the old woman could cultivate an uneasy silence the way others tended to a thriving garden.
	“No,” her mother said with a sigh, “sit down.  You don’t look like you slept.”
	“I did.”  Alex said, obediently taking a seat at the table.  It was oak, antique, handed down from some ancient ancestor or another.  Her father had once claimed that William the Conqueror had lugged it across the Channel on his back, to her delighted giggles.  Once upon a time it’d had four chairs around it.  Now there were two.  One on each end.  About as far from each other as possible.
	“If you’re not sleeping again then you need to see Dr. Bowman.”  Her mother said.
	Alex laid her hands down flat on the table, one over the other.  Decided she didn’t much like looking at the raggedy edges of her chewed fingernails and curled her fingers in.
	“I’m fine Mother.”  She said.
	Her mother turned.  Pale eyes ran over her daughter.  Alex could see that the old woman was chewing the inside of her cheek, one side of her mouth pulled strangely taut.
	“I worry about you,” her mother said, “…and I wish you’d keep your father’s watch someplace safe instead of wearing it around all the time.  If you lose it…”
	Alex sighed.  Stared down at the table, topmost hand moving to cover the slim, silver traced watch from her mother’s sight.
	“He gave it to me,” she said quietly, “before he left.  I keep saying that but you don’t listen.”  She tried to keep her voice even but could hear an edge slipping into it, almost against her will.
	“Alex…”  Her mother sighed, and something about that sigh, so very superior and assuming and…
	“It doesn’t even work anymore!”  She said, and though she’d intended to raise her voice, the volume of it shocked her.  She sat in surprised silence for a moment.  Both of them did.
	“And who’s fault is that?”  Her mother muttered, and turned sharply away.
	Alex got up.
	“I’m going to the beach.”  She growled, and marched briskly from the kitchen to the front hall, snatching her coat from the rack.
	“Not with that.”  Her mother’s voice was sharp and almost frightened, finger pointed at the black coat in Alex’s hand.
	“I’m not going to…”  She began to mutter, then raised her arms in outrage.  “It’s cold!”
	“Then be cold,” her mother said, “it’s better than…”  She couldn’t finish the sentence.
	Simmering, Alex returned her coat to the rack and exited the house, shutting the front door behind her and taking a deep breath.  She could feel hot tears of embarrassment and anger and sadness all coiling together into something hot and poisonous that seemed to sit at the very center of her soul.
	It was cold outside.  Windy too.  Alex ignored it, marching across the stones, running a thumb over the front of her watch as she went.  She didn’t even want to look down at it.  Or at the sea.  Or at the stones.
	Why had she even said she was going down here?  She hated it down here.  Had she really just wanted to hurt her mother.  How petty…
	Taking a deep breath, Alex looked down one side of the beach, then the other.  Aside from the sea cliff to her left and the flat sloping expanse of gravel that faded into the horizon to her right, all she could see was seaweed and the occasional chunk of driftwood.
	And…
	No.  The swell remained gentle and flat, the water ruffled only by the wind.  No sign of the frogman.  She assumed he’d probably returned to his submarine or gone ashore someplace else.
	Just as she was beginning to turn away, a flash of color caught her attention.  It was nestled into the gravel perhaps two or three feet ahead of the tide, an oddly shaped lump of…
	Hmm…
	Alex moved carefully up to it, being careful not to look at the impenetrable slate water only a few feet away.  She hiked up her dress just a bit and crouched, staring down at a rounded chunk of candy striped glass, worn smooth by the sea.  It was perhaps the size of a fist and shaped a bit like a peanut.  She picked it up and turned it over in her hands.
	It felt frigid, even colder than its surroundings, and dripped with moisture.  Still, the gentle swirl of its red and white stripes spoke of careful craftsmanship.  She wondered where it had come from and how it had ended up on her beach.
	Had it been part of a barber pole once upon a time?  Perhaps the shop it had been part of had closed, or maybe the pole had fallen and shattered and the remains had been dumped into the sea.
	She stood back up, holding the glass.  This felt special.  Nothing like this ever washed up onshore around here…
	Stepping away from the water with a hint of relief, Alex began the trek back up to her house.
	Perhaps she’d put this on her windowsill, so her nervous eyes could see it instead when they turned inevitably to the sea.