Jay laughed. "Treating me as if I were drunk …" she thought. She did not feel giddy any more. She could see the familiar outline of the House against an unpretentious sky, and that calm shape steadied her.
No breath of sound came from the House. The sky was grey, the sea was grey, there was no hint of sunlight. As Jay came to the door she noticed that the honeysuckle in the bowl at the hall window was still there, but dead. The wind had strewn the doorstep with leaves and straws and twigs, little refugees of the air.
In the hall there was an old woman, dressed in a black dress patterned with big red flowers. She was knitting. Her stiff skirts spread out in angular folds round her. Jay knew she was a fellow-ghost, because their eyes met.
Jay felt swallowed up by the silence. She could not speak, even to think, she felt, would be too noisy. The stiff skirt of the old lady made no rustle, the knitting needles made no click. But Jay could see that she was counting. The House seemed to be full of unmoving time. Outside the rain began to fall, and that grey sound enclosed the silence of the House.
After a very long time Jay spoke. "Where is my Friend?" she asked.
"Gone to the War," answered the old woman.
"There is no War in this world," said Jay.
"On the contrary," the fellow-ghost replied, "war is, even here, where Time is not. War is like air, in every house, in every land, on every sea. For ever."
Between her sentences she counted. Unpausing numbers moved her lips.
"On these shores," she said, "time and Life and the sea go up and down. Eternity has no logic. There are no reasons, there is no explanation. But there is always War. There are fighting sea men in the caves on the beach. Haven't you seen them, the dark sea people? Haven't you heard their high voices that were tuned to cut through the voice of the sea? Haven't you found their very wide, long-toed footprints in the sand? Have you walked blind through this world?"