PART - 5This is an extract from a novel.
They sat on the window ledge watching the storm come in over the sea, The air had become very still and heavy and the voices from the promenade below, which usually carried up to them easily, were muted and the words impossible to distinguish. The pressure of the air made the boy feel tense, but he knew the storm would he here soon and that would make everything all right again, and so he felt he could stand it.
The girl felt the first light gusts of the indecisive wind and felt that new joy inside her again. As a child, storms had terrified her — probably because they had done so to her mother and nothing leaves fear in a child like that — and together they would huddle on the sofa, curtains drawn, and jump out of their skins with every glow of lightning through the fabric and every peal of thunder. Then one day, years later, with friends in the countryside, and shy to show her terror, she had sat through the full fury of one, feeling she would die at any moment. She hadn't and the fear had been replaced by exhilaration, and since then she'd been hooked on them.
With that strange, unsettled wind that came now from the left, now the right, warm and thick, came the first lightning. The storm was still over the horizon and all that was visible was a glow of light like a bomb exploding in the sky above it. A child walking with her father saw it and cried out, pointed; the man leant down and counted on his fingers, his mouth moving. Then, from across the sea, a low rumble, like a giant just waking. The man had got to the end of his third hand; he showed his child, telling her, the boy assumed, that the storm was some three miles distant.
Some people stopped on the promenade to watch as more flashes came, others speeded up to get home and into shelter before it arrived. The first forks were visible over the sea, distant, and bright as a lamp, quick as a thought, and a group of French students gathered below gave a shout in unison at each; out of school, away from home and country, together and young and full of confidence. The wind, stronger now, plucked their shouts out of the air and bore them away down the coast, and the sea swelled with waves :hat threatened to break over the sea wall.
The first drops of rain fell, fat and heavy, on the heads of the boy and girl, and on the promenade small dark circles dotted the paving stones. The boy said, 'Here it comes,' and the girl nodded. At that very moment a great bolt of lightning tore across the sky left to right, cutting it in two with its bright-white jagged path, and straight after, while the photographic impression still hung ghostly in their retinas, a crash of thunder shook the windows, shook them from head to toe, and the rain came down in torrents.
The promenade was quickly deserted, as people ran for cover, the father picking up his child and carrying her across the street, hand held over her head to keep it as dry as possible. The students held out the longest, getting well and truly soaked before heading off, still shouting away at each other, up to their residences on Palm Street.
The boy and girl stayed on the window sill, drenched to the skin but not minding, watching the waves crash over the sea wall onto the promenade, leap high in the air to mingle with the pouring rain and come back down again. The horizon was gone! the sea and sky mixed into one element, and the air smelled earthy and full of charge.
The wind and waves died down, the rain slowed and then stopped and the storm had passed. The asphalt glistened, the slick pavement shone like oil. They heard a gull cry; the huge white bird flew out from where it had found refuge and soared up fifty feet in the wind without a wingbeat, effortless.
“I'd better go,” said the girl.
“What'll you say?”
“That I got caught in the storm and had to take shelter.”
“Some shelter,” said the boy. She looked down at her dripping clothes and laughed.
“I'll say I took shelter in the swimming pool,” she said “Fell in.”
“Will you call later?”
“I'll try.”
“It's silly,” said the boy. “I mean, you're eighteen.”
“They're just a bit set in their ways, old-fashioned. They'll come round eventually.”
“And in the meantime?”
“In the meantime I'll get caught in storms and cloudbursts, downpours and showers, drizzle and even thick sea mist, and I'll have to take shelter.”
“Just don't go buying an umbrella,” said the boy.
31 Both the boy and the gin 
