but in mind,
air of another kind,
it holds a place
in the air’s space
– Robert Creeley

The house was white like the Mediterranean and sparse, there was no glass in the windows. It was a combination of rich cloth, rough masonry and height, a kind of spartan luxury. Around it blew a faint warm wind and the sky was always a close-up blue. The house was on the side of a steep hill; people in groups tumbled down it laughing, when approaching from the road. Five young men lived in it silently, seen singly at a distance in doorways or exchanging a word in flight through the vast rooms. A wave from a balcony with the sea beyond. One of them would come upon you as you stood looking around on the balcony steps at the side or on the red patterned mat inside, fingering a shell. There was no entrance.

It’s difficult to say what happened there on a visit. You felt surrounded or captured or captivated, there was a kind of excitement as much in the spaces as in the people. It was as if the wind got inside your head and took you miles away from swimming pools, eating out, walks in the park and all those specific things.

Time passed by the second, clear, glassy and bell-like. Activities, conversations, personalities, were not the subject of a visit, – the environment, the place, was the subject. Morning was the most appropriate time there; as the sun rose above the sea, we’d stand leaning on the balcony rail or sit quietly in the room behind, not eating. Then we’d return to the low soft beds upstairs gazing at the monotonous sea to the horizon, at the variations in the brickwork or at the cats rolling on the floor sometimes knocking the large chest of drawers with their backbones. Later, we might see a figure moving down the hill or hear a quick shout and follow the others to the water. The track was a deep narrow water channel which cut its way through fairly dense low bushes, the humble, subtle variety that grow on exposed parts of the shoreline. Going down was very like descent. It was a quiet time at the water as in the house; the green depths of the sea pool, the spray leaping up from the rocks further out and the creamy line of distant beaches took most of your attention. We’d dive down into the pool looking at its sandy bottom until the salt hurt our eyes or sit around the edge to dry and open the small oysters growing on the rocks. Sometimes we’d stay down there for hours till the sun went behind the cliff. On these days we would’ve been out in the dinghy lying on our backs, almost asleep.

In the late afternoon a cold wind blew up for a few hours, which would force us back up the cliff. This was always a difficult climb, the rock was nearly sheer and usually damp. Someone had strung a rope down to hold onto, but always it remained frightening.

As we came up and the wind was blowing coldly, we heard shouting from the rocks. A girl, another visitor, had let go of the rope and had slipped on her way up. We reached the top of the cliff and looked down. She was lying on her back in the sand with the others around her. She couldn’t move and because it seemed possible that she had a spinal injury, no one tried to lift her. Someone had raced past up the hill to ring a rescue squad which arrived very quickly with striped poles, ropes and a flat hammock.

Standing back up the hill, we could see the red and white poles formed into a swaying, creaking crane, men in white pulling ropes very slowly and the people from the house standing still, looking down, or looking out to sea. The atmosphere was not very different from the other day, windy and cold and clear; the people were, as usual, silent, and it seemed as though this

incident would be absorbed into the life of the place without effect.

When the girl was in the ambulance, they asked for some of us to go along to help or give details. Four of us went. I sat in the front cabin and watched the low scrub blurring past the window for miles. The driver sat relaxed and business-like – the noise of engine was far too loud for conversation.

After the girl had been wheeled on a trolley through some white swinging doors and I had waited for several hours for news of her, the others said I might as well return. I walked through a pair of glass doors, leaving the other three standing in a group looking strangely out of place, almost wild, with their straw-like hair and bare feet, against the pale green vinyl floors and white curtains with huge yellow sunflowers on them. I noticed the change in the air coming out, from warm and slightly stifling to the harsh salty air outside.