Hap. Lesley Beake

things. Not just live on a … you know, basic level.”

      That wasn’t much help.

      But Ben stopped what he was doing, when I asked him, put down the delicate tools he was using to pick away at a bit of petrified dune, and actually looked at me. He was pleased. Maybe he thought I was finally showing some interest in the stuff that interested them so very much.

      “The early people who lived on this coast would have had the same brains, the same minds, that we – and all people – have,” he said quietly.

      I was standing so close to him, and looking at him so carefully, that I saw his eyes change while he thought of some deep aspect of what he had just said, saw the flicker of sadness change his expression.

      Same minds, I thought, just thinking about different things. But what?

      I like looking at Ben. His skin is like dark chocolate, smooth and strong, and he has fine, long-fingered hands with pale, oval nails. There is a kind of fascination about watching Ben when he is working at the stones, in the way the muscles of his forearm move under the skin and the way he frowns when he concentrates.

      “That was what made them different from those who had gone before. They were more like we are,” he said, suddenly, after a moment, startling me out of my watching.

      Immediately I understood. They were the beginning of us.

      I walk on the beach, beside the line of the tide, and my footsteps wash away behind me in lines of creamy foam and sometimes … Sometimes I almost catch a glimpse of something that isn’t really there.

      A flicker of thought, of sound. The beginning of a sigh or a laugh, swept away on the wind.

      They would have heard the sound of the sea, and that wouldn’t have changed over however many thousands of years. They would have had dark to be afraid of, and pale sun to warm them on winter days. They would have heard birds sing and watched fire burn. They would have felt the rocks, sharp under their bare feet, and the cool drops of rain on a sharp winter wind. They would have sat together doing things, making things … and been content.

      They would have loved each other …

      They would have.

      They would.

      * * *